CONCEPT__
My village is a tiny conglomerate of white houses in the middle of the dry plains of Extremadura, middle point between Madrid and the borders of Portugal. The streets were not even asphalted when I started going to the school and people would use horses and donkeys to go to pick up fruit to the fields.
There was a play area in my village, but it was a dark place for me.
All plants were dry in summer, the heat would make impossible to play there before 19h and the shadow areas were occupied by the bullies, who transformed it into a nightmare.
A strong no-belonging feeling and a very premature migration to a different school and town added to the mix. Confused and surrounded by adults and a sister that was still too small to play, I hid in my granny’s courtyard, a multifunctional area that allowed me to create my own safe space, my free kingdom of colors and lots and lots of plants; my own dusty playground.
My toys were very simple: tools to build or paint walls, old dresses and shoes, random kitchen utensils, tools from my mother’s hairdresser’s… And dolls, some old, some broken, but all of them inherit from older cousins or forgotten by the only female neighbor in the street.
No-girl-no-doll principle.
[…]
Time went by and I moved away happily.
Years later a mix of dementia and COVID took my granny.
After her death, the space remained empty. Completely silent and still.
I went back this year, to make peace with the nostalgia, to confront my own old patio, now ownerless.
This project is an homage to the space where I used to play during those summers and weekends, away from the outer world.
And also an homage to my grandmother, Pepa.
A series of photographs and some relics from thirty years ago that document the simplicity of that context and the effect of time on it.
A reflection about how much/little we need, about the value of memory, the overcome of trauma and the strong connection that those playgrounds still have with our today selves.
PROPOSAL__
Create a room where the toys are the main character, the documentation of these old reality. All prints would be the same size close to each other with explicative texts related to each image underneath each picture.
This juxtaposition of images will make the viewer fall from one toy into the next one, the same way that kids take and intensely love them all, not being able to decide which one is their favorite.
In combination with the images, some of the toys would be hanging from the ceiling, specially dolls, bold barbies, hair utensils, paper hats, connecting with the images.
DATES__
I would need the space for the weekend 23-25.06.2023.
Unfortunately I only got to know today that I this project was selected for the 48 Stunden Neukölln. There was a problem with the notification and I was not notified.
Now I know that it’s already late and the deadline is the 28.04 to confirm a venue/location. I hope planets align and everything works.
CV / BIO__
Óscar González (he/him), aka Óscar Barbosa, born in 1986 in Mérida, Spain, is a photographer and visual artist living and working in Berlin since 2011. He graduated in BA Art History in Salamanca University, Spain (2009) and completed his artistic training with a Superior Degree Vocational Diploma in Photography, Image and Sound, Salamanca, IES Rodríguez Fabrés (2011), focusing on analogue photography, old analogue processes and lighting studies for photography and spectacles.
As a photographer, Óscar has been working on his personal projects since 2009, when he started deepening his passion for this art form. His work has been focused on documentary photography, working mostly with film photography, developing and following the whole process himself. Since moving to Berlin in 2011, he has been combining different creative jobs with collaborations within the free art scene of the city, connecting with artists and collectives. His work in this area has been more prolific in the last couple of years, becoming a long term artistic collaborator with the queer performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS.
Their work together started with Tante Tod and the fraudulent delay of sadness (2020), a photographic research project about facial expression and portraiture, using a mix of different formats and photography techniques. This was followed by Karelia (2021) and The Crossing (2022). His last work together with this collective was HomeComing – Greatest Hits! (2022), a compendium of photography, portraits of the artists that took part in the project as well as a video art piece called “Onai, sinárra, ioidar” (“alone, quite, strange”), a very personal work based on a reflection about queer identity and the queer tongue damiá, created. All these works have been a mix of documentation and creative production that was used for promotion of the Ballhaus Ost Theater in Berlin and has also been published in zines and catalogs.
2022 opened a new chapter in his work and life, as he stopped working for big companies in order to focus on his own journey as an artist. A moment of redefinition and redirection, as a result of two-and-a-half years of isolated home office. In the first months of 2023, his photographic work has been selected for
The Blue Room at The Ballery, Berlín. Sinárra _ April 2023
Thank you so much.
Best,
Óscar
STUDIO BLUE BARBOSA 