CONFLUÈNCIES. Artistic interventions in the towns of Route 99
Villanueva de Viver is a border town between the Valencian Community and Aragon, a place of crossing cultures where, in its beginnings, the Moors, Jews and Christians lived alongside each other. I’m interested in that frontier and multicultural nature, with everything that involves, both in terms of a meeting place and place of confrontation at the same time.
“Towns are not that idyllic and problem-free place that the visitor imagines them to be. In them, people know each other and there are feuds that stem from a long time ago”, says one resident.
When I looked in the historic archives for information about its population, I also discovered various documents from the Municipal Court, including five conciliation judgements dating back to the beginning of the 1940s, the first years of the post-war era…. Conciliation judgements. I’m interested in these documents, not just for their legal nature, but also on an aesthetic and poetic level.
Conciliation, being able to come together after the war and come to agreements, is the basis of all coexistence. With this idea in mind, I am weaving together a proposal from what I’ve heard and observed during my stay. A project, still at the implementation stage, based on small acts of conciliation, from the daily gestures and elements of nature, which metaphorically tell us about making life possible.
Download here the information about the artistic intervention process being carried out by Pilar Beltrán in Villanueva de Viver.
Pilar Beltrán (Castelló, 1969) combines artistic creation with her teaching at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Valencia (UPV). Her ideas often emerge from thinking about what is nearby in order to understand what is global, using (auto)biographical elements to talk about the collective experience.
