El Santa Mònica and La Traginera, Comunalitat de Ciutat Vella, present the community project Llums Comuns, which is committed to art and public space as a common good.
The kick-off will take place on Thursday 9 November, at 7.30 p.m., with the lighting of a light installation based on the work Liberty and Light by Chila Kumari. The lighting coincides with the inauguration of the Raval(s) festival and will be on display outside the Santa Mònica until 4 February.
The neon sculptures that make up Llums Comuns are part of the work Liberty and Light, by British artist Chila Kumari Singh Burman and were produced at the Impulsem cooperative in the Raval neighbourhood for the Llum BCN 2023 festival. With Liberty and Light, Kumari fused the pacifist message of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica with the iconography of her rich Hindu-Panjabi cultural heritage to denounce the current global turbulence. A burst of light and colour in a collective context of darkness.
Once the exhibition is over, the lights of the installation will be made available to the Raval neighbourhood so that they can make use of it as a community resource, that is, a resource to encourage participation, self-organisation and support networks between people, collectives and entities, and training will be offered so that the interested neighbourhood can build their own lights.
With this project, the Santa Mònica materialises its objectives of understanding the public function in terms of the common good and redefining itself as a new non-elitist, inclusive and community institution, crossed by listening and curating.
The collaboration between the Santa Mònica arts centre and La Traginera, Comunalitat de Ciutat Vella, was born with the aim of working together to disseminate art and public space as a common good and to work together to generate synergies and proposals of a community nature in the territory.
During these months, the Llums Comuns project also proposes various related community activities and actions that will allow us to get closer to the pieces and the project:
- 10.11.23 / 18 – 20 h / Ruta decolonial: masculinities of frontiers, slavery and Spanish colonial logic, with Mabel Llevat. Visit and discussion of the installation Llums Comuns, as part of the Raval(s) festival.
- Participatory itinerary through the Raval with the Ruta de Autor, coinciding with the lighting period of the neighbourhood project #RavalKm0.
- Exhibition of lights by the artist Chila Kumari in different meeting spaces in Santa Mònica.
- DIY/DIWO light design and construction workshop with artist Teresa Rubio and Impulsem.
- Presentation of a downloadable digital fanzine designed by Iera Delp, which will include the experience of Llums Comuns and instructions on how to build DIY/DIWO light pieces.
