Moorish Pride.
I am also an Arab, like you, and I have been here for more than 1300 years.
My blood settled in this land in the year 711, when Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed the strait that today bears his name -Yabal Ṭāriq, Gibraltar- and, in command of a Berber contingent from North Africa, began what would later be known as the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. That event was not a simple military invasion, as some nationalist discourses would have us believe, but the beginning of a complex cultural, religious, scientific and social transformation that would profoundly mark the destiny of what we know today as Spain.
The Arab-Islamic presence in al-Andalus was not ephemeral: it lasted nearly eight hundred years, from the 8th century until the capture of Granada in 1492. During this period, cities such as Cordoba, Seville and Toledo became centers of knowledge and coexistence between Muslims, Jews and Christians. Through the House of Wisdom, translations from Arabic into Latin, and the development of architecture, medicine and poetry, al-Andalus shaped an essential part of the European legacy.
This civilization is an inseparable part of my genealogy: on my father’s side, the Qobarro; on my mother’s side, the Yepes. Both lineages have roots in Abarán, a corner of the Ricote Valley in the ancient kingdom of Murcia, where the Moors, even after the capitulations, continued to live, cultivate and transmit an identity in resistance.
Before settling in Abarán, my lineage came from Mudejars from Hellín, and it is very likely that they were previously settled in the Tolmo de Minateda, one of the most important archaeological sites in the southeastern peninsular, with a continuous presence from Iberian times until the Middle Ages. The passage of time and the persecutions did not erase that memory, which still persists in the land, in the names and in the blood.
When, in 1492, the Catholic Monarchs concluded the so-called Reconquest, a new stage of systematic exclusion began. In 1502, Muslims in the kingdom of Castile were forced to convert to Christianity or be expelled, and this order was extended to the Crown of Aragon in 1526. The new Christians, called Moriscos, lived under constant suspicion, surveillance and persecution. In 1567, Philip II issued a pragmatic decree that expressly prohibited the use of the Arabic language, Moorish customs, and -among other provisions- prevented them from being offered work or help. Finally, in 1609, Philip III decreed their definitive expulsion. Nearly 300,000 people -among them my great-great-great-grandparents Hernando and María Luisa- were banished. There are records that attest that Hernando and his wife were forcibly embarked and abandoned in the city of Genoa, stripped of their lands, belongings and dignity. The documentation of the time reflects how many were treated as enemies of the State, and how they were denied any type of aid, in compliance with the provisions decreed by the Crown.
But some returned. They went back to their homes, to the Moorish quarters, with their dignity intact and their will unshaken. Because this land was theirs. Not by conquest, but by cultivation, by history, by memory.
And here we continue. My family has been on this soil for more than 1300 years.
It is particularly striking that those who today set themselves up as guardians of national identity ignore this history. From a homogeneous and white-centered conception of Spanish identity, they deny the plural character of its origin. They want to expel those who arrive to the peninsula in boats full of death, looking for a possibility to continue existing, fleeing from war and misery.
They want to convince us that they are dangerous, thieves, terrorists, rapists, murderers… that we must close the door to all those who are not faithful to the ideal of national identity: white, cis, straight, Catholic, ignorant.
Poverty and marginalization cause the violent need to subsist at the expense of others. The only dangerous immigration is that which is rejected.
In the same spirit, to give another example, they have reacted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the framework of the Eurovision Song Contest 2025.
Israel’s participation, in an international context where it is accused of war crimes and genocide against the Palestinian population (according to reports from the United Nations and organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International), was widely questioned. RTVE, even from within, expressed its opposition to Spain sharing the stage with a State accused of such practices, an initiative which I personally support.
However, it seems, if Israel has not bought the festival votes, that a significant part of the Spanish population, influenced by right-wing and ultra-right media sectors, decided to support Israel, not because of geopolitical affinity, but as a form of opposition to the current progressive Spanish government, which has shown support for the Palestinian cause from the beginning, even recognizing it as a state in 2024.
For good measure: a member of the PP leadership posted on X, the Nazi social network, her intention to vote for Israel, according to her, “without having heard the song”. Juan Carlos Girauta, a Vox MEP, encouraged to “send a message to Sánchez” along with the vote for Israel, and the PP youth publicly celebrated having managed to get Spain to give its 12 votes to Israel, sharing the payment vouchers of the online votes they made.
All these people have lost their way, I would like to think, and are not capable of rejecting a genocide if by doing so they can harm the current government. Their only desire is to be in office, no matter what it takes, and no matter what.
This phenomenon reveals the extent to which the concept of freedom has been perverted: it is defended only when it responds to self-interest. It denies the possibility that others may live, flee, love or seek refuge in a different way. Those who are different are marginalized, whether because of their faith, their gender identity, their migratory status or their history.
This reaction is not new. It is a symptom of a power structure that reproduces itself in the name of normality and is sustained by historical ignorance, forgetfulness and exclusion. Reactionary thinking is not based on the preservation of values, but on the fear of losing privileges. It does not tolerate conflict or ambiguity because it lives in the fantasy of a unique, immutable and superior identity. And so, history is rewritten to silence those who have always been there.
But this land, as history shows, is not the property of one race or one religion. The Iberian Peninsula has been Iberian, Celtic, Roman, Visigoth, Arab, Jewish and Christian. It has been a port and a bridge. And its greatest wealth has always arisen from its capacity to welcome, to mix, to dialogue.
Today, in the midst of the ideological noise, it is worth remembering that freedom is not a battle cry, but an ethical commitment. It is not a matter of imposing one truth, but of opening space for others to exist. It is the willingness to listen to others, to recognize their pain, to share bread and shelter. And above all, not to forget.
My name is Bran Solo and my Arab blood has inhabited these lands since 711 c.e. My ancestors were marginalized, deported, dispossessed and silenced. But they returned, for this is their home and will remain so.
Bran Sólo. Mayo-2025
Sources and publications of interest:
García-Arenal, Mercedes. Los moriscos. Madrid: Fundación MAPFRE, 2009.
Epalza, Mikel de. Los moriscos antes y después de la expulsión. Barcelona: Icaria, 1992.
Bennison, Amira K. The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the ‘Abbasid Empire. Yale University Press, 2009.
Human Rights Watch. “Israel and Palestine: Events of 2023”. www.hrw.org
United Nations Human Rights Office. “UN experts warn of serious human rights violations in Gaza.” Octubre 2023.
Boletín Oficial del Estado (Archivo Histórico). “Pragmática de Felipe II prohibiendo el uso de lengua árabe y costumbres moriscas”, 1567.
Harvey, L. P. Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614. University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Ruiz Souza, Juan Carlos. “La arquitectura en al-Andalus: identidades, transformaciones y supervivencias.” Al-Qantara, CSIC.
Marín, Manuela. La vida en al-Andalus: sociedad, cultura y economía. Madrid: Akal, 1994.
Galleries against art.
Galleries are no longer betting on art. They only make money.
There was a time -not so long ago- when an artist could dream of entering a gallery and finding something like a home there. Not just a place to hang their work, but an ally: someone willing to take risks, invest in production, promote, introduce their work in public and private collections, help build a career. Sometimes even a friendship.
Today, that model barely survives in a few rare exceptions. In its place, an industry has emerged that behaves more like white-walled real estate: it rents space, demands exclusivity, takes 50% of every sale, and barely bothers to represent the artist outside of their Instagram. Because if you sell, fine, and if you don’t, someone else will come along.
In the Renaissance, artists were protected by patrons who saw art as a transcendental value. Lorenzo de’ Medici not only supported Michelangelo, but invested in his training, hosted him in his house, introduced him to the court. The relationship between artist and patron was symbiotic, though unbalanced, yes; but there was a shared vision of the power of art as a reflection of the times.
Today, the gallerist has almost completely disassociated himself from that figure. In cities like Madrid, it is common to find art spaces whose managers spend the day sitting behind a desk, looking at their cell phones, waiting for something (or someone) to happen. No curated proposals, no solid calendar of activities, no search for new audiences or dialogue with other contexts. The artist sends the work at his own expense, he hangs it himself, and in many cases he is not even paid for the transport if the piece is not sold.
The galleries no longer buy, now they only work on a deposit basis. You give me the work, and if I sell it you get part of it, and if I don’t, it will be here for years without you being able to sell anything anywhere else.
The irony is that many of these spaces continue to demand a 50% commission. For “giving visibility”. As if that were fair or enough.
But the story is changing. Because artists no longer rely exclusively on a gallery to reach the public. Today, a creator can have hundreds of thousands of followers on social networks, sell directly from his or her studio, receive international commissions and generate community without intermediaries.
Platforms such as Instagram, Behance, Patreon or even TikTok have allowed many artists to become their own promoters, managers, curators and gallery owners. And although this implies an extra effort -yes, not everything is painting- it also opens a path of freedom.
American artist Mark Ryden, for example, has publicly stated that he prefers to control his production and relationship with collectors from his own studio, without relying exclusively on galleries. Even more radical is the case of Ashley Longshore, a contemporary pop artist who built her entire career selling directly through networks, with a waiting list of clients and no 50% commissions. In her words: “The galleries wanted me to be quiet and obedient. I prefer to be my own brand.
And the truth is that, with a cell phone, any artist can show his or her work to the whole world. Without going through the chair of the gallery owner who, between yawns, waits for someone to come through the door.
It is not about demonizing all galleries. There are, even today, committed spaces that continue to bet on art and artists. But they are a minority. And as long as most of them continue to operate as luxury decoration stores, demanding exclusivity without offering commitment, the artist must ask himself if that is the structure he really needs.
Today, more than ever, art can circulate in other ways. It can live in independent fairs, in self-managed exhibitions, in digital platforms, in nomadic markets, in private collections built on the basis of direct conversations.
What if the artist stopped waiting to be “discovered”? What if he became his own gallery? What if he organized his own exhibitions, sold his works, made community with other creators, without going through the 50% toll?
Maybe not everyone wants to or is able to do it, and that’s fine with me. But it is essential that we know that the option exists. That we have the means. That we are no longer tied to the whims of whoever owns a clean room and a client list.
The art market is in crisis. But that is not new. What is new is that the artist, today, has more power than ever to redefine the rules.
So don’t sell your dignity at 50%. Art is not a decorative object or a financial asset. It is an act of expression. And whoever creates it also deserves to decide how it is displayed, how it is sold and to whom.
Art will be saved if the artist is saved first.
Bran Sólo. Mayo-2025
Left, left, right, right.
Is anyone really left-wing or right-wing by mystical vocation? Rather, I believe, we are so by biography. Political affinity is not born with us, nor is it chosen as one chooses the color of the sofa. It is inherited, it is learned, it adapts to the circumstance like a glove to the hand that needs it.
For example: those who are born into a precarious environment, where justice is a hollow word and opportunities are handed out as if they were bitter candy, end up developing a sensitivity that does not leave them indifferent to inequality. Hence, many people with these life experiences embrace progressive positions: they seek to change the system because, frankly, the system never embraced them. Who will want to preserve what has never protected them?
Conversely, if one has always lived with central heating, private insurance, compound surnames and “everything in order, as God intended,” it is quite natural to want things not to change too much. Conservatives, as their name suggests, conserve. They conserve order, resources, the way of life… and if it can be cultural hegemony, so much the better. They call it “freedom”, but often it is fear of losing their privileges disguised as civic virtue.
To be clear: If you do not have problems, you will want not to lose privileges and it will be very difficult for you to empathize with those who do have them, and if you have problems, you will be more sensitive to injustice and inequality, and it will be easier for you to want to fight to change things. Our political ideas are a direct reflection of our personal circumstances, and not of an objective analysis of the needs of society as a whole.
Psychology has looked into the matter -of course- and has found personality differences between progressives and conservatives. The former tend to be more open to new experiences (translation: they withstand existential crises better), while the latter prefer order and stability (i.e.: don’t touch anything, they have everything tied up).
At the brain level there are also differences: conservatives have a more active amygdala, which makes them more sensitive to fear and threat. Liberals, on the other hand, use more of the anterior cingulate cortex, which helps them adapt to the unexpected. One sees danger in everything that moves, the other doubts everything – sometimes even himself.
Who decides what we are?
Affiliating to an ideology like someone who gets a Chicago Bulls membership card is not such a good idea. No one is completely of anything, unless they have given up thinking. But that, unfortunately, happens more often than we would like.
Many vote by inertia, by inheritance, by comfort. Sometimes even by rebound: “I am a leftist because my father was a fanatic”. As if political identity were a poorly resolved family duel. In social networks, things are already bordering on tragicomedy: people argue more about loyalty to one side than about ideas. We turn politics into soccer: eleven against eleven and let’s see who can shout the loudest. The problem is that here we are not playing for a cup, we are playing for the present and the future.
What is often presented as “traditional values” is nothing more than the defense of an order that excludes. If you are not white, nationally born, heterosexual, Catholic and from a good family – the whole combo – conservatism has nothing to offer you but suspicion. It’s easy to say “every man for himself” when you’ve already got yours figured out. And so, the discourse of self-sufficiency becomes contempt disguised as meritocracy.
The uncomfortable thing about all this is that it forces us to look inward. Thinking for oneself requires effort, and sometimes it even hurts. It is much easier to delegate one’s political conscience to a party, to an ideology, to a leader with a firm voice and arched eyebrow (I love you, ZP). But if we really want a politics that represents us, we will have to start by understanding why we think the way we think.
If only political parties did not exist, and our representatives were just that, representatives, messengers of our votes. If only every Sunday we were summoned to the polls to decide, with the supervision of various committees of experts who educate us, but do not influence us from economic interests, to decide each of the actions that the government carries out.
I wish a policy of all, and not of half.
Bran Sólo. Mayo-2025
Vote REAL MADRID
Trolololó. Loló.
Recently, in our bipolar Spain, we have gone to the polls to decide who will be the next to occupy their throne in power, specifically in the city councils and autonomous communities. After the skewed results, where the majority seems to be fed up with the management of the last years, the current government has announced the celebration of early general elections, leaving us all between astonished and not caring at all (what really worries us is that we will be on vacation… let’s not fool ourselves).
At this moment the “Clown League” begins. A spectacle of spotlights, microphones, slogans and promises, as well as a few chutes, balls to children’s heads, offsides and boos to some faggot referee, which will conclude with the public defenestration of the loser and his hunchbacked henchmen, and the burning alive of his voters in the square of each town, as well as the proclamation of the Magnus President of the Government 2023-2027, who as a Miss will greet and talk about Confucius and Venezuela from his balcony.
This spectacle has already got us, many of us, unhinged, and has become an old-fashioned tradition that we no longer trust.
Representative democracy, on which the functioning of this country kingdom is supposed to be based (look at your ID card, it says kingdom, you do not live in a country/state), consists of electing representatives who defend the interests of the citizens in the institutions. Where do these representatives get the set of interests and needs of their citizens? Do they carry out a survey? A field research? Do they watch the news on La Sexta? Well, maybe… but I am afraid that many of the needs that our politicians try to satisfy and solve are those that also concern us all. That is, they are their own. Worrying.
And I am not referring to the comfort of the office, of a job in a seat, in an office. To have a car, a house, a salary and attention for life.
I am referring to the fact that it is the personal experience of our politicians, depending on where they have grown up, where they have studied, their economic level, the political and moral ideology of their family, and the circumstances of their environment, which defines the objectives, views and sensibilities of each one of them, and of the party of which they will form part.
Here the jacket begins to fray. We are no longer talking about just a representative, we are talking about a person, subjective and with will, like everyone else. This, which may seem obvious to all of us, hides some trick that perhaps we are not seeing at first glance.
First of all, are these people really qualified to represent anyone? Perhaps they represent those who want to be like them, but not others. So far, our politicians are not asked for any psychological report, nor a study of intellectual, emotional, empathy, specific skills of a representative position…. They are only asked to smell good, to be well-groomed, and to speak with a lot of charm. If they have a catchy slogan, all the better. And if they can be seen with their grandparents in the park or with their family at a charity event, there is no doubt that they are the right people to decide what is going to happen to the lives of the people of an entire country for the next four years. If all else fails, they can say “You more,” and they win the fight.
And that is what party democracy is all about, giving the power to decide to a group of people who have their own ideas, some of them private, and who among themselves are forced to think and decide from the same breadbasket, so that they can impose them in order to maintain their way of life. It seems that their intention is not to represent, but to be right. To align their way of thinking with that of the majority of voters, and to convince those who do not think the same way that they are wrong.
Politics is very simple, it is divided in two:
- Those who are fine and want to stay that way, and think that if nothing changes, everything will stay the same (makes sense, doesn’t it?) These are the ones we call conservatives.
- And those who are not fine and want to be it, and for that they need things to change (not them, things). Let’s call them progressives.
Depending on what family you were born into, you will be one thing or another, unless you hit the lottery or find a way for others to give you their money. Remember that you don’t get rich by working, you get rich by thinking, and there are people with very bad ideas.
On this basis, it seems normal that in the end democracy is typically organized in two camps, which generates pitched battles to be right and to maintain one’s position. In addition, this system has several known problems, or minor flaws, such as:
Bipartisanship, or the tendency for only two organized gangs to alternate in power. This reduces voter choice and favors clientelism and corruption. In addition, the fact that there are mainly two parties in dispute continuously divides people into two opposing sides, something typical Spanish, turning Spaniards, accustomed to battle even at leisure, into real fans of two rival soccer teams.
Another problem is the disproportionality between votes and seats. Minorities are left out and new political formations are disadvantaged, as they have less chance of accessing parliament. This also generates inequality among voters, since some have more weight than others depending on the territory where they live. This is quite suspicious.
And to put just one more point, it also turns out that the representatives are only accountable to the voters every four years (or never, really), and during that time they can do whatever they want without consulting them. People have no mechanisms to recall politicians who fail to keep their promises or to propose initiatives.
Thus, politics becomes a media spectacle, where what matters is charisma, marketing and polls.
We do not vote for ideas or programs, we vote for a person: “I am going to vote for Rajoy”, “I like the Galician”, “I can’t stand Perro Sanchez anymore”, “El Coletas is going to sink the ship”, “this did not happen with Paquito”…. And we give our life, our time and our money to that person’s decisions. What is going to happen to us during our lifetime, our total existence, is largely based on the decisions of the government of the country in which we live. If tomorrow it is decided that we all go to war, we all go to war; if they take away half of our money, we give it to them; if alcohol is banned? we all go to France.
Isn’t this medieval?
Just as Real Madrid fans flock to a match, dressed in the same way, with their badges, their chants, their war paint on their faces… configuring themselves as a single, cohesive entity, with a goal so clear that no one can doubt or take a step back, so, we go to the polls, and to the whole of life, with our flags, our pride in being and thinking as we do, our intolerance of others, and our desire that everyone be like us and share our success. We are not going to vote, we are going to win. That’s the problem. This is not a competition of groups, this is not “socca”,
We are gambling on conditioning our whole life, which is the only thing we are going to have, and we do not realize that we are leaving everything in the hands of anyone, so that he can do what he wants with us, simply because he has convinced us that we are right, and he will maintain and assert that same reason before the others. Politics is a battle of egos, a game played by two or more buffoons who charge us admission, and at the exit, some ultras will beat themselves up and sleep warm but happy.
Some wear Spanish bracelets, others do not shave their hair and only buy bio, others will wish for the return of barbarian forms of government that we enjoyed in this country not long ago, such as the various republics or the dictatorship, without realizing that everything in the past did not work, they all did it wrong, and we should do something new according to the needs of everyone TODAY, instead of trying to be right with genocidal formulas of the PAST.
I do not want my life to be based on the rules of an outdated system. I do not believe in communism, nor in socialism, Marxism, fascism, capitalism, nor in anarchy, republic, monarchy, party democracy… no conservatism, liberalism, nor nationalism. I do not believe that anything that has not worked before will work today, at least it did not work for the majority, but only for a few. And I think we are now ready to realize this. To look at our buffoons and send them home.
If only politics were simply a craft of anonymous people. A set of connected bodies, fully transparent and at every step and action publicly documented, from where mainly people are taught to think, to detect problems and propose solutions, to participate in making them and to help ensure their maintenance. If only these politicians were only civil servants, in charge of compiling and creating reports of needs, with committees of experts in each subject represented by scientists, outstanding people from the world of culture, sports, economy, industry, ecology…. and every Sunday, instead of going to mass (well I don’t think that is done anymore), or instead of going to soccer, we would go to listen to a lecture on the future of medicine, on the public health system of the state (of the kingdom), on the education of children, we would go to debate, to make a group decision, and to vote, and we would vote for ideas, decisions, measures… instead of giving our votes to a person who, possibly, fails all the penalties but comes out with very white teeth in the photo.
For the time being, we will have to be satisfied with not being killed in the streets for wearing high heels (whether size 36 or 46), with the pots on the balcony to put an end to climate change, and hope that, whatever happens, El Madrid wins.
Bran Sólo. Jun-2023
On art and lies
Hello, Chat-GPT. Open Spotify.
I recently had the pleasure of attending a live music concert. It was by one of the best known artists of the international scene. I enjoyed it, a lot, because, what a surprise, there were only four of us in that concert hall and, as you know about me, I am not a fan of crowded places… to say the least.
At the end, I was able to talk to the other few attendees and they all commented the same thing: lately nobody went to concerts anymore because music had become something cryptic, something only for musicians; that people did not understand if what they were listening to was good or not, if it was worth paying for it or not… they could not even decide if they personally liked it or not… so, faced with so much confusion, they decided not to listen to music, and by extension not to go to any concerts.
What a shame, really, because at this rate music is going to disappear. Nobody cares anymore… After all the amount of messages, values, poetry and emotions that it transmitted to us… or that we transmitted to each other through it. After all it united us, all it made us live, share, understand…
Now the musicians dedicate themselves to sing about the same music. The lyrics talk about notes, about impossible compositions, about taking music to a higher level… and of course, only musicians understand it, and only musicians are interested.
But it’s not just music! Something similar is starting to happen with cooking. Restaurants have stopped cooking to feed, and are dedicated to experimenting exclusively with new formulas that provoke unknown, magical, mystical palatal sensations. As a result, culinary products and their raw materials have become more expensive in favor of gastromasonry, and few connoisseurs can afford to go to a restaurant to eat. Chefs now only cook for other chefs.
What a pity that the world is taking this drift… if only all that were true.
This is not really happening, you know, at least not with music or cooking. But it is happening with another creative field: with ART, and it has been happening for several decades.
Painting, perhaps, is more likely to recruit thinkers and philosophers, people more interested in studying culture than in living it, sharing it or producing it. The art world has always been full of people, to put it bluntly and from the inside, pedantic, marginalized or with few social skills; outsiders who end up expressing their vital needs and delusions of grandeur through an indirect medium such as painting, writing, photography…. This is so; I paint for this very reason.
The case of music was similar in its beginnings until, perhaps because of the consumer society, we began to turn musicians into a sort of gods, saints to be prayed to with their own musical prayers, and maybe that has saved them. Music more easily awakens emotions and thoughts, even desires. Mathematical sound has that magic, it activates the strings with which we think and remember, and we love that.
But what about painting?
We painters, especially since the 19th century, strive to be gentlemen, ladies, bohemians, sad, eccentric, thinkers and, in short, characters outside any classification, because our unique point of view will be what gives value to our work. When we create compose, we use pieces that already exist to obtain new elements, but we must put it all together from the nonsense to reach something that, sometimes, has a new meaning. This is creativity, and it engages, and you end up doing the same with everything around you. I have a freezer full of unpaired legs.
This is why it is said that art is a language. It is not only because, sometimes and not always, it serves to express, but because it is composed of meaningless particles (letters) that grouped together form logical structures that represent something real (words). In this way, an artist chooses a word from the dictionary, breaks it down, rearranges it, perhaps mixes it with other words, some words he has heard from someone influential, and thus “creates” (you can’t create anything, I’ve already said it. IT IS COMPOSED!) a new word or phrase with a new meaning. Pure genius. Ask Picasso.
Now, let’s imagine that our genius composes hundreds of words that, well, only he understands.
It’s a kind of language of his own that no one else understands. Does that make sense? What’s the point of a language if not to communicate with others? Well, it can have aesthetic purposes, like Tolkien’s Quenya, which looks very nice on your cousin Karen’s calf but, let’s not fool ourselves, it would be easier to have a conversation in binary… Or it could have a ludic function, we are simply playing at creating languages because creating languages is a fun and enriching game. I don’t know!
And here’s the rub.
We’re all past the “what is art”, “this is art” and “this is not art” debate. That’s my 5 year old daughter doing that. This toilet is art… and so on.
It is my opinion, and it should be yours too that, in the end, art is anything created by an intelligent being with a motivation beyond the merely functional.
That is to say.
Let’s imagine the first glass in history. It would be a bowl, half a coconut, a folded leaf… anything that fulfilled a function. But once we already have the technique under control, we stop to think that maybe it is not decorous for the chief of the tribe to drink her camel spit in a coconut bowl, like everyone else, and that maybe it should have a shape, a color, some inlays that make it beautiful, pleasant, that speak of the status of the person who owns it, that speak of the creativity of the tribe, of the talent, of the time in which the artist who creates it lives….
It is no longer something functional, it starts to be something with an additional motivation, with a message, that has information. Even when it is something merely aesthetic, it is telling us about the taste of the time, the means, the resources… It is an object with information.
And at the same time as objects, art will reach actions, words, sounds, movements, war strategies, clothing, the structure of society itself?
In everything there is information that the human being, in our case, has added for others.
Everything is art.
And why are we no longer interested in art?
Art interests us, but we don’t realize it. What doesn’t interest us is art that talks about art. That’s an unbearable pain in the ass (marvelous pain for some friends).
From Marcel Duchamp and his piss-pot, then Klein and his “painting” paintings, and even Hirst and his colored dots or Jeff Koons and his plastic dolls made by other people… art has not talked about anything else but itself.
Artists make art to talk about art. They no longer talk about love, death, society, beauty… now they talk about the possibilities of art itself. They talk about how far the definition of art, painting, sculpture, performance can go. They speak of perception, of the material, of the interpretative… of increasingly abstract and meta-artistic concepts that, frankly, do not even interest us artists anymore.
And therein lies the culprit. Artists and scholars may be interested in that art, but what does it matter to some lovers, to a lost child, to a lonely being, to a struggling woman… what does it matter to them how black a black color can be, how a white on a white background can be called art, how a Serbian woman counts grains of rice until the audience goes into ketosis…
Nobody cares about that. And few do anything to change it.
My work is to compose images about things that not only concern me and come out of my life experience, but that I know concern us all. My goal is visibility. To be seen. Because I think, arrogantly but to some extent objectively, that what I have to say is important, and that I can make others feel a little less alone.
There are many people who will never get a message that they need and that maybe I have, because they think that art is boring, that it is only for people who “understand art”.
Don’t let any self-styled representative of art, a stuffy gallery owner, or a curator in an open shirt tell you what is good and very expensive, and what is vulgar or brutal and worthless. If your 5 year old daughter can do it, if with a mop and a lighter you can do it, if it doesn’t make you feel anything, if it doesn’t mean anything to you… it will be art, but it is not good.
Painting, and art in general, has to be like music. We all know if we like a song or not. Nobody says “Oops, I don’t understand reggaeton so I don’t know if I like it”, “I don’t know if this Pop is any good”, or “My 5 year old daughter sings like Enrico Caruso”.
Believe me, if you like it, it’s good. If you don’t like it, it’s bad art. You were right.
Bran Sólo. Dic-2021
