Wiederaneignung / Reappropriations

Over its history Andalusia has absorbed many different influences that have greatly changed its landscape, it’s culture formed in a continual process of embracing and reappropriating these diverse conditions over time. Spain’s long building boom has left behind a landscape transformed at an unprecedented scale. The point of rupture of the crisis has resulted in a series of monumental architectural structures entirely disconnected from their intended function, or to the economic and political forces that created them. As with the end of all eras, the last structures produced were also the most excessive in cost, scale and ambition. Having lost the cohesion that they would be given through the continuation of the construction process many abandoned sites occupy an ambiguous middle ground – neither finished as intended nor strictly incomplete – a position that is nevertheless entirely consistent with their position on the threshold of an era.

This exhibition is an extract from an ongoing collaboration between Javier Callejas and Anna Tweeddale that is investigating this condition and some of its key challenges: finding new mechanisms to perceive these structures simply as they are, and, to understand them as they could be. This series of images, selected from the wider study, explores the spaces of one of these sites of crisis, using light as a medium to redefine its spaces and architectural condition.