The text here is an edited down version copied from my post on the cmap blog. Take a look there for the full report and all the photos of our Art Club kids enjoying their celebration in the gallery setting of Guayaquil's prestigious Mueso Nahim Isaías.
The exhibition was the culmination of 7 months of workshops and featured all the artworks from their pop up street exhibitions alongside photos and videos of the process, accompanied by a section on the Años Viejos rag dolls that the children created at the end of 2014. This was a really exciting opportunity to bring together our Art Club kids, their parents and siblings, our JUCONI colleagues and the wider public in a new space, where we could all look at the vast amounts of artwork afresh, acknowledge all that the children have achieved over this time and really have fun celebrating their success together.
The exhibition ran from the 10th to the 14th of May in Nahim Isaías' "multiple use room", the same space the gallery had given us last year. Once again it proved to be an absolutely spot-on space to realise the installation that Emily and I were visualising: a large central area to replicate the carnival cart (a fiddly process involving fifty-odd safety pins and metres and metres of invisible fishing wire to suspend the truck's outfit and accessories from the ceiling!); a long white wall to display the hundreds of photos documenting the project's process in a linear time-line; another smaller wall to display the special feature photography project of shots taken by the children themselves; a projector to screen the various carnival and Años Viejos videos; and finally, a cosy corner for dressing up and face-painting.
Window panels read: "Who are the most important people in your neighbourhood?" "My dad, my mum, my granny, my auntie, my uncle, my friends, the teachers, the orientadores [JUCONI psychologists], my family, my brothers and sisters, the peacekeepers, all of you, everyone"
"What do you and your friends do in your free time?" "Play 'la escondida' [a hide-the-ball game], dance, study, go to the internet cafe, play football, play in the football pitch, go out, dance salsa and reggaeton, play basketball, playstation, play video games"
Spilling out of the back of the carnival cart here in the gallery as it did during the street celebrations in Socio Vivienda 2, the kid's (and many adult's) absolute favourite: their football pitch and puppet football players:
Our children always love seeing photos of themselves and so the documentary timeline, running the full length of one wall and even encircling one pillar, was an immediate draw on entering the space for all of our kids and of course their hugely proud parents and siblings. It was great to see all of our visitors taking plenty of time to pour over the photos of the different stages of the project and read the various labels explaining the processes and activities used to explore the chosen theme of "family, home and community". The timeline included photos of the graduation of our old groups and it was great to see plenty of these old art club members in our audiences on both days of the exhibition celebrations. There were also plenty of photos of our 2 weeks of dance practice with guest facilitators Thamára and Sofía. We also set up a corner dedicated to the end-of-year project from 2014, "Our Imaginary Friends", where the children made their own original "Años Viejos" rag dolls using recycled materials, papier-mache and paint. Bearing in mind that almost every child had taken their imaginary friend home before Christmas to celebrate the end of the year with their families in true Ecuadorian style by burning the figurines, it was lucky that we still had one puppet remaining in our office that we were able to bring to the gallery for display - a cheeky-looking creature who was the first to don a Club de Arte spray painted t-shirt in the dressing-up corner!
A very special element in the exhibition was the display of the children's photograpy project. On display for the very first time here in Nahim Isaías, these photographs were taken by the children themselves on disposable film cameras and give us a real insight into their worlds. This project was enabled by Emily bringing back a half dozen disposable cameras on her return from the UK in the new year and was inspired by the idea that by the children being able to have a camera in hand at home it would provide a very real interpretation of the project themes of "home, family and community" directly from the kids. Plus the children are always fascinated by the digital camera we use to document our cmap workshops and love to be allowed to take photos themselves! The results are even better than Emily and I could ever have begun to imagine. Just as Emily has seen through her personal passion for using film-photography, the quality of light and texture that comes through in the prints made from the developed film is absolutely beautiful and above and beyond that, the actual content of the scenes are breathtaking, fascinating and moving all at once. Looking at the different shots that the children took of their families, their friends, their homes and streets, it feels like we the audience are being offered a really privileged opportunity to see through their eyes into their lives. Indeed one of our visitors who popped in on the Sunday of the exhibition by chance was so impressed by the documentary nature of the photos that he spoke passionately about his belief that the photos should reach a wider audience, even talking about the idea of having government funded museums in the sectors themselves to display the children's work for their communities on a permanent basis.
(left) "I love you JUCONI" - detail from one of the original designs for the carnival cart, (right) "In art club I learned lots of crafts and the art of drawing, ok!" - reflection from one of our Socio Vivienda attendees during their graduation process in June.
At the point of writing now, from London at the very end of July, I am still really movedd by all that our Art Club cihldren acheived over the last year and a half. I am also remembering the great collaboration with Jonny Browning from Jan to May 2014, Blanquita Moreno Jan to June 2014, and then Emily Legg from October 2014 to the very end of our placements in July 2015. Thanks to all of you for all we shared and all I learned from you!
(Above) "Thanks to all the boys, girls, teenagers and mums, for their participation, creativity and enery!"
Emily and I had a lot of support throughout the week of the exhibition, both from the extremely helpful gallery staff at Nahim Isaías including director Guisella Moreno and our JUCONI colleagues, in particular Ronald Proaño, Juan Carlos Álava, Joseph Amiri, Cinthia Soto, Isabel Velarde, Paola Leon, Fabio Ruata, Uri Criollo, Dolores Freire, Diana Vítores, Emilio Carrillo and Martha Espinoza. A particularly huge thank you goes to Emily's friend from back home, Harriet Lyall, who during her post-London-marathon holiday here was an invaluable help in the preparation for and the 12-hours of installation of the show plus taking on filming, photographing and face-painting roles at both events. Thanks also to Emily's brother George Legg who arrived just in time for our Friday show and was thrown immediately into the thick of Art Club practice when he also got straight into both face-painting and being face-painted and helped out with the photography.
The week after the exhibition, I took the show down and bagged the work up into many many bags with each child's name on it, and began the hand-nabck process. This coincided with local TV channel "Canal 2 Ecuavisa" coming to document the various work that JUCONI does, which meant we ran an impromptu Art Club session at the bus stop in Socio Vivienda, face painting, playing with the children's puppet football pitch and drawing. A great opportunity to present the creative spirit of Club de Arte and cmap sessions!
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