Tomar las aguas
[Taking the Waters]
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2022-2024
Turismo per cura
[Health Tourism]
2022
Diptych consisting of a digital pigment print with embossing on 225 gsm Somerset Enhanced paper and photoengraving on 300 gsm Zerkall Artrag paper mounted with glue. 64 x 44 cm each.
Turismo per cura [Health Tourism] establishes a connection between two pools from different eras by joining them in a diptych. The background of the first composition shows the swimming pool of a modern ship belonging to one of the biggest cruise lines, inside which I pasted a postcard of the swimming pool aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, flagship of the Kraft durch Freude¹ fleet, which also frequently stopped at Naples so that tourists could admire the ruins of Pompeii. The second composition features a postcard of the inspiration for the KdF cruise ship pool’s mosaic: the Foro Mussolini swimming pool. The background and surrounding of the second postcard is actually a pool from the suburban baths of Pompeii, connecting this touristic storyline with Il Duce’s plans to bring back the architectural grandeur of ancient Rome.
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¹ “Strength through Joy”, an indoctrination programme of the Nazi party’s German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF) that offered recreational and leisure activities for the working class.
Las Islas Afortunadas
[The Fortunate Isles]
2024
Diptych consisting of a digital pigment print with embossing on 225 gsm Somerset Enhanced paper, photoengraving on 300 gsm Zerkall Artrag paper and colour photograph mounted with glue. 64 x 46 cm each.
This diptych suggests a relationship between Tenerife and Madeira, two islands that were visited during the maiden voyage of the cruise liner Robert Ley, which set sail on 18 April 1939. One month later, the ship returned to Spain along with the rest of the Kraft durch Freude fleet to take the Condor Legion home once the Spanish Civil War had ended, just a few months before the beginning of World War II. I placed the indoor pool aboard that ship—the Wilhelm Gustloff’s twin, named after the leader of the German Labour Front—atop the ruins of the spa of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which operated under the auspices of Obra Sindical Educación y Descanso during the Franco dictatorship. Beside it is a replica of a postcard showing the pools frequented by the lower classes at the Lido Bathing Complex on Madeira, where the Salazar regime’s Fundação Nacional para a Alegria no Trabalho operated; this image is, in turn, centred on the swimming pools of a contemporary cruise ship like those that regularly congest the harbours of the Fortunate Isles today.
Prendre les eaux
[Taking the Waters]
2022
Diptych consisting of a digital pigment print on 225 gsm Somerset Enhanced paper and photoengraving on 300 gsm Zerkall Artrag paper. 64 x 46 cm each.
The Roman baths, where warriors went to rest and relax, are in the centre of a water slide on a cruise ship, where the recreational use of water has been taken to new extremes. Continuing that circular itinerary, a postcard of baths that represent the rise of modern hygiene theories plunges into the spa of a cruise liner that offers “health and wellbeing”. This circuit of aquatic play and healing alludes to the tourism industry’s conquest of the seas and its inevitable consequence: the pollution of our planet’s waters.
This work was produced thanks to the Visual Arts Grants of the Regional Government of Madrid.
More about this project
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🔗 Después del descanso, exhibition at Centro Párraga, Murcia, 2024.
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