A Weaver of Gazes

It is challenging to encapsulate a creator like Pilar Farrés, both due to her works, meticulously crafted thanks to her unique poetic sensitivity, and the multitude of registers that she adopts in her artistic practice, especially when she delves into the territory of curating or when she goes behind the scenes to give voice to those who often do not have one. In the world of art, in which egos grow ceaselessly, Pilar Farrés seems to have embarked upon a path in the opposite direction: projects such as Empordoneses, Trenta mirades d’un espai indiscret, Memòries, and Nit share their plural nature or, more precisely, a vindication of the creative community. Farrés defines herself in few words: “A multidisciplinary artist from the Empordà.”

Her home and creative center are located in Castelló d’Empúries. What we mean is that this artist has put her roots down in this mythical town (the entire Empordà seems to emanate from its stones and the cathedral at its epicenter). And she is indeed rooted: the landscape is always present in her works, not the innocent version, but the one that becomes visible through fragments, clippings of the world that the artist manipulates almost as if they were offerings. Farrés’s creative journey begins like this: with a hidden branch, an insignificant pebble, some simple terracotta pieces, or in paper so fragile it seems to be made of the wind. The journey begins in this way, but its existence is marked by the desire to take off: the ability to go from pure simplicity to a transcendent sphere.

The best example is possibly the collective exhibition project called Empordoneses, which is truly able to create a “community” and a feeling of belonging to a group that runs the risk of normalizing the precariousness that affects the sector. In the words of Farrés: "Empordoneses works on the basis of a theme that is different every year, yet is always linked to social change that the world is experiencing: refugees, the crisis, recycling, and so on. With this leitmotif, the one hundred plus participants who take part in each edition create the pieces that are exhibited. The latest edition of the initiative, the thirteenth, has shown its maturity, serving to remind us year after year, among other things, that the origin of everything is in people and their ability to relate to one another.

Community is what is at stake (in the sense that it is in danger): as Charles Taylor (a leading communitarianism philosopher) aptly pointed out, in order to acquire a personal identity, a previous process of socialization and integration within a community is necessary, where the action of recognition on which all identity is based is possible. In other words, to have a singular existence, one must have a shared existence.

At the beginning of the article, we highlighted other initiatives by Pilar Farrés such as Nit, Trenta mirades d’un espai indiscret, and Memòries. It is this kind of collective work that can cement an artist’s ability to go from the simplest to a transcendent sphere: survivors of the Spanish Civil War who can express their memories (or the reconstruction of their memories), or a collection of photographic gazes directed at the rooftops and from the rooftops, referring to the human singularity, which allows us to live trapped between right and wrong, between reality and dreams (with all their ghosts). As Farrés states: “All memory is a subtle yet complex construction that combines remembrance and oblivion.” //