the street is our gallery

“VINCULO IRROMPIBLE” (Unbreakable Link) is a piece of urban drift and passing rituals. Project curated by Susuna Blas and edited by Noemi Méndez for Nocapaper. The project by Aly Calle revolves around the representation of women, emphasizing the stage of adolescence,where changes occur from childhood to adulthood.It is the first time of many things of which we have no previous experience, a stage that influences the formation of our character and way of behaving.

Adolescence is the beginning of a great change, in which we begin to make our own decisions, and in which as time goes by, we know that those decisions made before, will have a good or bad consequence. It is the beginning of our own lives, a stage in which everything seems gray, in which we think that the world is against us, in which we begin to know ourselves and face the changes that will lead us to be strong and Independent.

The experience consists of “ritual pieces” (collages in the form of a puzzle + urban action) where the incomplete puzzle can be completed, making an initiatory or cathartic journey, to meet the pieces that are in the marked coordinates.

Vínculo Irrompible.Su doble

The project starts with 10 collages printed digitally on cardboard puzzles, later to carry out an urban action consisting in the dissemination of one of the pieces of it. This intervention consisted in the placement of a piece of each puzzle in different cities of the world.

This text by Susana Blas reflects on the concept of this fascinating project:

The heiress of your eyes[1]  

(Notes on Unbreakable link by Aly Calle)

“here is in me an insatiable desire for freedom, adventure, stories, journeys, other souls; a desire to leave all doors open, to try everything, reject all bonds (…)” Simone de Beauvoir, Cahiers de jeunesse (1926-1930)

I got up early to write. I like working while Roman and Klára are asleep, maybe because I feel control over everyone at home. Precisely over these last few days I have been thinking that in a few years my children will be teenagers, and I felt afraid. Unbreakable link (2017), the new series by Aly Calle (Madrid, 1983), has left ajar a door that was closed in my biography: the door to my early youth. The project takes on the teenage years as a rite of passage. We usually deny this intermediate stage and report in which later on we refuse to recognize ourselves. And yet maybe we owe much of what we are to this mire of pain and pleasure. In my own case, at that muddy and contradictory time, together with my sisters and friends I built up my way of looking and loving, and laid the foundation of my passion for art and writing.

The teenage years for girls have additional consequences too. Up to then, many girls may think they live in a neutral space of opportunities and possibilities. The coming of adolescence brings us face to face, whether we are aware of it or not, with the discrimination we live with as women in the world, and the violence we suffer in body and in mind, just because we are, and just because we are there, although we took no decision about it. Aly Calle describes it in these words: “Girls search for independence and in a short period of time are capable of feeling absolute happiness and a minute later the deepest sadness, just as if it were from love to the most profound hate. (…)  This is the beginning of our own life, a stage when everything seems to be grey, when we think that the whole world is against us (…)”.

“Everything seems to be grey” says Aly, just like Andrea, the character in Nada (Nothing) (1945) by Carmen Laforet some decades ago: “This is what usually happens in novels and in films; but in life … I was starting to realize for myself, for the first time, that everything is still grey and becomes grey, everything is ruined by living”.

Grey. In Aly’s collages there are always ranges of grey … and also folds, and legs and scissors …  and male hands laying hold … but there are also doors and windows through which we can escape from these bars.

I like the fact that the images in Unbreakable Link (2017) are jigsaw puzzles, and that a piece is missing in all of them as it has been taken somewhere else in the world. Aly provides us with the coordinates to go and find them and complete the picture.

I hope I am a brave mother when the time comes. I hope I know how to encourage Klára and Roman to set out on the voyage of discovery to find the piece that will complete their own jigsaw.

[1] “The heiress of your eyes” is the title of one of the collages in the series Unbreakable link (2017) by Aly Calle. Titles play a significant role for the artist, generating poetical associations as a counterpoint to the images.

Susana Blas, Lavapiés (Madrid), 31 March 2017   / Trad: Mark Guscin

Each project work consists of:
– 1 Digital reproduction of the collage 21×29,7 cm.
– 1 Puzzle of cardboard 21×29,7 cm.
– 1 Documentary photography of the urban action.
-1 Piece of puzzle with coordinates

ALY CALLE Interview here