Ela Fidalgo · Habitar el Conflicto

La casa viva: un arte que sirve
Fernando Gómez de la Cuesta

Habitar el conflicto is more than an exhibition; it is an invitation to collective reflection, an act of healing, a testimony to the transformative power of art. Ela Fidalgo transforms the Casal Solleric into a space for community creation, a laboratory of living forms, emotions, feelings, and complicities, where the participation of nearly 500 people is the clear expression that we are facing a unique project, a way of creating in community that shows us that art is not only an aesthetic exercise, but also serves a function, as an agent that makes us look towards places we hadn't noticed before, that helps us raise awareness, position ourselves, and seek solutions to our problems: art serves.

The proposal begins with a collective workshop in which participants, many of them linked to social and inclusive associations, have been invited to sew their emotions, affections, and thoughts, leaving their mark on the artwork and finding in it a place to share, to connect with others, to heal in community. Ela Fidalgo says that change begins when we listen to each other, that art is that space where the personal gives meaning to the collective and the collective to the personal: a profound process of collaboration and encounter.

The result of this shared process is a large sculpture of a mother that occupies the center of the Casal Solleric courtyard. This piece, created from a blend of fabrics and emotions sewn by the participants, becomes the heart of the proposal, the space for protection, attention, and care. The mother is the home, the place of creation, where one grows and dreams. This sculpture, which is simultaneously intimate, personal, and collective, inhabits the casa viva, inhabits Fidalgo's workshop temporarily moved to the Solleric, transforming the building to work in community, to weave emotions, feelings, and complicities.

Along with the sculpture of the mother, the artist presents another proposal that is completed after the participatory action of the public. In the ShowCase of the Casal Solleric, a chair with long, welcoming arms invites the viewer to sit in it and be embraced. This seemingly simple gesture is a call for encounter, for contact, for companionship, for comfort. The chair welcomes the one who approaches, receives emotions, and transforms them, protects you, and exposes itself, a way of feeling that art can be a refuge, a place not only to observe, but to participate and activate.

The third work of this proposal is an extraordinary intervention, beautiful and unsettling, in which long fabric arms emerge from the windows of the loggia on the main facade of the Casal Solleric to establish a metaphorical embrace with the city we live in. These arms, stretching outwards, seem to reach not only the passersby but also the urban landscape, the public space, the stories Palma keeps in its collective memory. The installation creates a dialogue territory between the interior and the exterior, between the private and the public, between individuality and community. A work of strange beauty that invites us to think about the city we dream of, a city built from encounter, mutual respect, and shared care.

Through this project, Ela Fidalgo questions the very nature of art as a tool with the ability to transform realities, to open places for discovery. To inhabit the conflict is a proposal that dismantles the concept of the exhibition space and turns it into a living house, a call to create in community, which draws its strength from the interaction between people, helping us understand that art is never an isolated act, but a powerful tool to build the future we imagine, to produce a more just, more empathetic, more human society. A city where, like that fabric embrace stretching outward, art is a refuge where humans can find companionship and meaning.

The embrace, motherhood, community, understood as refuge, as home, as a place to believe, grow, and create. The Casal Solleric as an open, common space, as a meeting point where we learn by doing: a project that cares for a community that accompanies, a proposal that inhabits the conflict to transform it. Thus, its workshop, the Casal Solleric, becomes that laboratory of living forms, a territory for continuous exchange, for healing, a context that builds the city from connection, from encounter, where what unites us transcends what separates us, a city that reminds us that true creation is always collective, and that only through mutual support, respect, and love, can we find the true meaning of being.

ACTIVITIES:

Combined visit to the exhibition Ciutat de Palma Antoni Gelabert Awards 2024 and Living in the Conflict by Ela Fidalgo

January 23 at 6 p.m.

February 15 at 11 a.m.

(in)visible maternitats. Barrier of evidence

Dialogue visit to the exhibition Les cases obertes and Inhabiting the conflict

Free visit

March 8 at 11 a.m., 12 p.m. and 4 p.m.

The Living House

Discover the studio of artist Ela Fidalgo

Ela Fidalgo has moved part of her studio to the courtyard of Casal Solleric, making this space even more vibrant. More than 500 people have participated in the creation of the piece 'The Mother'. Come explore the studio with the artist, who will explain the works he is currently working on.

Friday, April 4th at 10:00 a.m.

Registration at solleric@palma.es

Community Workshop

The workshop invites participants to collaborate in the making of La madre. More than a sewing exercise, it is an opportunity to create a space in which people from different backgrounds and disciplines can share their stories and knowledge. Experience in sewing is not required, but the essential thing is the encounter and collective learning that arises from this process.

An open and free creative space to share and explore the creative processes of artists.

What does it consist of?

With Ela Fidalgo we will sewing the skin of La madre, a work that will be exhibited in Habitar el conflicto, at the Casal Solleric. Among artists, professionals in the sector, beneficiaries of NGOs, schools and neighborhood associations, we will create a space starring creativity, teamwork and knowledge transfer.

You don’t need to know how to sew; you just have to feel like it.
Participate as long as you can and as many times as you want.
From January 10 to 15
From 10 am to 8 pm
Casal Solleric