Individual residencies / Olot
MERY CUESTA REIGADA
From Tuesday, 17 January 2023 to Monday, 23 January 2023
Bio
Cultural critic and Art curator. As a critic, she has developed her career in the newspapers La Vanguardia and El Mundo, as well as in Radio Nacional de España (Radio3 and RNE1). She has curated more than thirty exhibitions around visual culture, cinema, outsider art and contemporary art, including "Quinquis de los 80: Cine, Prensa y Calle" (CCCB), "Bálsamo y Fuga: Artistic creation in the penitentiary institution" (CaixaForum), or "Absurd humour: A constellation of nonsense in Spain" (CA2M). She was the curator of the Catalan Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale (Institut Ramon Llull). She is the Director of the Master’s Degree in Illustration and Comics at ELISAVA, adjunct professor of Contemporary Art in the Faculty of Audiovisual Communication at Pompeu Fabra University, and a doctoral student at the same university. Her two most recent essays are "La Rue del Percebe de la Cultura" (Ed. Consonni) and "Absurd Humour" (Ed. Astiberri).
Project
During my residency at Faberllull, I am going to delve deeper into my research "Skullculture: Symbologies of the skull in the contemporary public sphere", a project that culminates in two ways: as a book and as an exhibition. I started this research in 2013 and now I have the opportunity to publish it and to construct an ambitious exhibition script. "Skullculture" explores the symbolism that the image of the skull has accumulated to this day: as a panic icon, as a pop object (in movies, in comics, in illustration), as a symbol of dissidence (in subcultures, in tattoos) or even as an occultist object. The trail of the skull in different time contexts is very eloquent for understanding the different attitudes towards death adopted by society in different periods. The project traverses fields such as art, cinema, illustration, emblematics, comics and fashion.
The expected and the unexpected
I have just returned from an individual residency at Faberllull Olot, and the experience could not have been more satisfactory. It happens very often that in our daily life we are not able to find a space and a time of concentration in which to direct all our energies towards a single objective, as we are continually interrupted. The residence in Olot allows to make a parenthesis, to get that longed lapse in time that is so necessary to carry out creative processes. The environment is totally flattering (the inspiring and volcanic landscape of Olot), the attention from the Faberllul team is warm and excellent, and the facilities are perfect to be comfortable and worry only about the goals you want to accomplish. But there is more, something that I did not expect when I applied to Faberllull and that has been very rewarding: it is the relationship with the rest of the residents. It is very stimulating to be able to share breakfasts, dinners and moments of relaxation with other people - writers, authors, visual artists, scriptwriters, playwrights.... - who are in the same vital situation as you are, looking for a retreat to culminate the creative process. For all these reasons, for the expected and the unexpected, my experience at Faberllull can be described as excellent.