Jorge Conde_visual artist: Jorge Conde at the University of Alicante Museum ( MUA )

Jorge Conde | Roma non si vende | EAC 2017

MUA. University of Alicante Museum. June 2nd - July 22nd

Jorge Conde will be presenting the installation "Roma non si vende" (2016) as part of Encuentros de Arte Contemporáneo (EAC 2017), to be held at the University of Alicante Museum (MUA) starting June 2nd. This installation consists of a series of unseen works created in 2016 as resident artist at the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome (Italy) with the MAEC-AECID Visual Arts Grant awarded by the Spanish Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Culture, along with the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation.

"Roma non si vende" borrows its name from a series of billboards and propaganda flyers that were distributed in Rome a few weeks prior to Saturday March 19th 2016, when a huge demonstration was scheduled in order to protest against several economic and social policies promoted by the Italian government. In addition to that, at that time the city of Rome itself had been suffering from a long-term lack of municipal government which ended up causing an even deeper institutional crisis.

Conceptually, this installation must be understood as part of the project "A World-Size House", an artistic, interdisciplinary investigation on the social, architectural and urban impact derived from the recuperation and transformation of previously abandoned buildings and degraded urban areas in Italy's capital city. To do so, Jorge Conde explores up to seventeen obsolete, disused urban areas or abandoned buildings that in the past three decades have been rescued from oblivion and given a second life as cultural institutions.