1229 | 336 | Art in place: creative geographies to empower rural identities

Beyond the academic narrative, the practices of territorial rootedness combine discourses and practices linked to the geohumanities, especially when they interact in artistic practice to convey the essence of place, where the academy is not enough to talk about the importance of geography in everyday life. Based on creative methodologies, artistic curation and the need to generate contemporary narratives of the rural world, it aims to reflect and create new discourses that link art with the exercise of thinking as a community in a rural village in Central Catalonia, Avià (Berguedà). For three consecutive years, community practices have been developed linked to the will to strengthen the local pride through the artistic challenge, always a spearhead that goes beyond reason and that underpins the village cohesion. As a geographer and curator, I had opened up the possibility of thinking from another place about the local essence by interacting with female artists who have turned local idiosyncrasies upside down to create an uncomplicated vision of rural life. The first example recovers family photo albums to pay tribute to the elderly in the summer of the global pandemic where the older population experienced the worst consequences. In the second year, the technique of child-centered drawing was used to tour the municipality and make it our own with a final exhibition in the form of a productive circle in a freshly mowed field. Finally, working with the village associations, the local imaginary was reversed based on the magic of surrealism to make community social activities visible in a new dialogue between the community and the essence of the place. This whole legacy speaks of a felt, rooted geography and a geo-humanistic need to position itself in the world._x000D_

Cerarols, Rosa
UPF, Barcelona

ID Abstract: 336

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