BARROTES
2023
Site-specific installation using adhesive vinyl
Presented as part of Art Au Centre, Liege (BE) 2023
The relationship between commerce and desire is at it’s most evident and public in the layers of separation of the commercial vitrine. The objects and those that desire them are engaged in a performative dance mediated by only glass and good manners.
The threshold where interiority is pressed against the exterior, and how, with shop windows the opposite is true. We aim to see within, to be entered into consumerist fantasies of owning the designer clothing, the new electronics, the lifestyle promised on the other side of the vitrine. We are exteriorised not only in our inability to consume, but in our inability to enter the spaces of consumption through the stories that they tell. Of elegance, newness or unattainable familial relationships.
In Spanish, we call the metal bars on the exteriors of residential and commercial windows “Barrotes”. They often take decorative and elegant shapes. However, the word is the same as for the divider of a jail cell.
The large scale vinyl decal presented here is inspired by such metal coverings. This symbol becomes an almost votive gesture of protection to the space within. A minimalist intrusion into the interior/exterior interaction with the window and a fragile reminder of how much social constructs themselves protect us and our objects, and not so much the windows or bars.
