Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson

Aternativa Siglo XXI, Málaga, Spain

Demoliciones y Excavasiones is a photographic series (35 mm slides) shot in 2002 as a part of the project and environment Un elemento más, realized in Málaga in the same year in Aternativa Siglo XXI.

In 2002 we lived and worked in the centre of Málaga. We mapped and documented part of the old city centre, which had been undergoing a process of gentrification for decades and had recently seen a new wave of immigration from North Africa. The series was presented as a slide projection (81 images) at Un elemento más, and we later also made a printed version of the series (around 30 photographs).

The series follows our creative process of transforming and inhabiting the space of the gallery. It depicts our daily life, interventions and encounters in the surroundings, and the life and culture of this old working-class area, which has undergone significant changes due to the processes of land and property speculation and gentrification.

The photographs of the area show an emphatically chaotic situation in a city that is very popular with tourists. The area is clearly in a transitional period: old buildings are being demolished, rubbish is left lying around, parking lots are springing up, immigrants from nearby North Africa temporarily occupy pieces of empty building lots, inhabitants try to hold on to a way of daily life. The title is taken from a construction company billboard with the inscription ‘Demoliciones y Excavaciones’, which can be taken literally: demolitions and excavations—of existing and underlying structures. The human mechanism of survival clearly has disconcerting aspects. Demolitions and excavations shows a different Europe, one which – though not often represented – is certainly present in our everyday lives.