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IN PICS: Velazquez’s ladies-in-waiting spruce up struggling Galician town

In 2008, sick of watching his derelict neighbourhood dying a slow death, Spanish artist Eduardo Hermida walked out of his studio and painted a mural inspired by Diego Velazquez's masterpiece "Las Meninas".

Published: 4 September 2018 08:23 CEST
IN PICS: Velazquez's ladies-in-waiting spruce up struggling Galician town
All photos by Miguel Riopa / AFP

It was a spontaneous protest begging authorities to do something in Canido in the industrial northwestern town of Ferrol, dubbed Spain's Detroit for its shrinking population and abandoned homes.

His friends joined in. As the years passed, so did other artists from as far afield as Taiwan and before he knew it, Hermida had created an annual urban art festival that has helped breathe life into the neighbourhood, attracting visitors and new residents.

In April, a mural sporting the alleged signature of legendary street artist Banksy appeared overnight, generating breathless excitement.   

Was this the famously anonymous graffiti star's first foray into Spain, coming to the rescue of the struggling Galician town?   

Unfortunately not. Banksy's official website has since denied he was behind the stencilled image of two Guardia Civil police agents kissing, and the author's true identity remains a mystery.

But the show goes on. 

READ MORE: Mural of Spanish police officers snogging 'not a Banksy' after all

'Agonising' decline

During last weekend's edition of the event, now sponsored by commercial brands, artists from around Spain got busy on walls marked with a yellow “M”, indicating where they were allowed to work.

Some perched on aerial work platforms to spray-paint giant building facades, others delicately glued mosaics to the wall of a house in ruins.   

The neighbourhood has accumulated around 240 quirky variants of Velazquez's 17th century painting, which depicts young Infanta Margarita with her ladies-in-waiting (Meninas in Spanish), wearing tight corsets and wide, bouffant skirts.

Cubist Meninas, a Menina with a Darth Vader head, another sporting the feminist slogan “Time's Up”, a mermaid Menina with long blue hair and a scar on her breast campaigning for breast cancer, another whose face lines follow the cracks of a wall…

In Canido, they come in all colours and sizes, helping liven up a town that Hermida says has suffered an “agonising and chronic” crisis sparked by the decline in its once buoyant shipyards.

“That pushed people to migrate, to leave, and there are lots of abandoned houses,” the bearded 52-year-old artist says.   

Since 1981, Ferrol, also the birthplace of late dictator Francisco Franco, has lost more than 20,000 inhabitants according to Galicia's statistics institute.

Between 1998 and 2017 the number of under-30s living there fell by nearly 47 percent.

In February, Zara, the high-street fashion favourite whose billionaire owner is Galician, closed its only store there.

Injection of youth

Canido, perched high in town overlooking lush rolling hills, has been “one of the worst-hit” neighbourhoods, says Hermida.

But it has gradually changed over the decade helped in no small part by the Meninas, locals say.   

While many dilapidated, single-storey houses remain, several new homes have sprung up.

A popular supermarket chain has also opened.   

“There is a gynaecologist, fishmonger, restaurants with good food,” Hermida adds.

Jose Gandara, a 46-year-old newsagent who has run a small shop since 1996, estimates that Canido's population has doubled since the festival began.   

“There are more customers… young people have come to the neighbourhood, couples, young people with kids.”   

He says tourists from cruise ships that now dock in Ferrol trek up to the neighbourhood to see what all the fuss is about.   

The concept of art helping revive a town is not new.   

Fanzara in eastern Spain, for instance, has been revitalised by giant murals painted by street artists from around the world.   

For Maria Fernandez Lemos, Ferrol's 46-year-old urban planning councillor, the Meninas festival — and a close-knit community — has helped generate pride in a town that didn't have much to go on.

“It's had a huge impact,” she says.

By AFP's  Marianne Barriaux 

ART

African-born director’s new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

One of the rare African-born figures to head a German cultural institution, Bonaventure Ndikung is aiming to highlight post-colonial multiculturalism at a Berlin arts centre with its roots in Western hegemony.

Published: 8 July 2023 10:13 CEST
African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

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