(Refill with hope, resquat, reoccupy)
(Reversing the Process)

Once again, in response to the pressing need to demonstrate that art also exists and in a renewal of our commitment and duty to offer it to society, we have commissioned six large posters, the theme of which this year will demonstrate that art is a reflection of its context, of the current climate of social conditions and circumstances.

The idea we will be focusing on this year is inhabiting, the occupation of the space—be it physical, conceptual, social, political, emotional or symbolic—that belongs to all of us, an act committed in this instance through art.

These days, newspapers, news broadcasts on television and other media are increasingly filled with stories that feature the word desahuciar, meaning ‘to evict' in Spanish, whereas ahuciar, according to the Spanish Royal Academy, means ‘to fill with hope or confidence'. Meanwhile, Grey Flag continues to rekindle the anarchist approach and to raise the need to see every possible shade of grey in today's situation and so seeks to reverse the meaning of this oft-heard painful word by focusing on alternatives, reinventions that will refill us with hope, that will lead us to resquat and reoccupy the physical, geographical and other spaces that we are forced out of every day.

Curator: Blanca de la Torre

With the support of Mario Legorburu

Grey Flag 2012

Txaro Arrazola (Vitoria-Gasteiz, 1963) Until when in the tail end of history?

Commitment and the need to expose social and political injustices or violence run through Txaro Arrázola's work. The cultural/social role of women and the crises caused by the migration and forced displacement of population centres are intertwining themes in a body of work focused mainly on the field of painting, but also naturally addressed by video or installation pieces.

In this work produced for Grey Flag, her painting reflects on the situation of a people in custody by looking at the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf. The term “camp” has always been associated with something temporary, a makeshift solution. Only mutual support and a belief in this temporariness have helped them to survive under these conditions over the past 37 years. During this time, women have played a fundamental role in terms of public responsibility, an unthinkable notion in other Arab communities.

2013 october-2014 january

See work
On the façade

Sandra Vásquez de la Horra (Viña del Mar, Chile, 1968). El visitante de mis sueños (The visitor of my dreams)

An artist who usually creates small drawings that are generally absent of colour, in which her personal imagery merges with a political component and traces of her studies in graphic design can be observed. Thus, the poetics of death, religion, politics, magic or sex are intermixed with a fantastic iconography of a certain folkish nature using a steady stroke that avoids narrative.

El visitante de mis sueños belongs to her famous Pesadilla series, which tells us to become aware of our own dreams and the importance of the space occupied by our dream world. This feedback between dreams and social reality as a central theme that is always tinged with black humour and mystery is enhanced by the use of black and white.

2013 july-august

Priscila de Carvalho (Curitiba, Brazil, 1975). A house is not a home

Priscila De Carvalho's work is structured around dynamic architectural landscapes focusing on problems related to uncontrolled urban planning. Her work combines the influences of Pop Art, Informalism and folk art, alongside the monumentality of mural paintings and architectural forms.

By using such diverse materials and sources as movies, the Internet, photographs and memory itself, Carvalho's work represents the complexity, chaos and paradoxes of life in the 21st century.

A house is not a home deals with the concept of inhabitable place or space and its various realities. It expresses our concept of home, how we live and feel it, and at the same time also examines the constant political, economic and social changes of living space and the way we inhabit it.

In short, it explores the differences and similarities between a house and a home and the emotional relationship to material and immaterial within the context of an established, nomadic society.

2013 may-september
See work
On the façade

Alain Urrutia (Bilbao, 1981) Reinhabiting Memory

Alain Urrutia (Bilbao, 1981) has spent years practicing a painting style that is closely linked with history and, consequently, closely connected with memory. Its light, fragile condition guides his approach to painting, always in shades of black and white and with evanescent glazes giving rise to fleeting images that are not always easy to grasp, as if prone to escaping us and becoming lost in oblivion.

For this edition of Grey Flag, based on the idea of “reinhabiting memory” and providing a certain social critique through art, as well as contributing hope or trust in the future, Urrutia has presented us with a poster in which an Orsini appears represented. This device, which in the mid to late 19th century was one of the main symbols of anarchism in Europe at the time, was designed in 1857 by the Italian anarchist Felice Orsini, after whom it was named.

The intention is to reassess its aesthetic and defuse the violent connotations that the object may have in order to provide a semantic reinterpretation of both a moment in history and the situation today, with the aim of making the painting acquire a revelatory nature.

2013 april-july
See work
On the façade

Martin & Sicilia (1974 and 1971, Santa Cruz de Tenerife). Open 24 Hours

Their work is carried out in thematic series created in “traditional” formats that are always based on pictorial narrative, whose most classical conception they usually combine with other visual rhetoric, such as illustration and posters, photojournalism, theatrical performance, film language and even certain advertising resources. Using these ingredients, they construct a characteristic visual scheme or structure in which the figures of the artists themselves are featured in the representation as the characters acting out the main roles of their works.

Open 24 Hours is the result of a real action in which the artists occupied a food store in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. With this action, the artists have presented an ironic way to overcome today's economic collapse, while at the same time speaking to us of the disillusionment in the idea of progress and the current moment. The metaphor of the supermarket is perfect for this, as it is open for consumption 24 hours a day and so that the contemporary subject can be consumed. The press announces that the government is at the service of corruption 24 hours a day, 24 hours in crisis or perhaps 24 hours exposed to social chaos.

2013 february-may
See work
On the façade

Próximamente: Priscila de Carvalho