The fact that Dani Ruiz always goes with his mobile in his hand is not something that makes him exactly special. He is a young man in his twenties in the Barcelona of 2022, it would be weird if he didn’t. When he is going to cut his hair “al Suleiman & rdquor; and he is waiting at the door, ‘click’, he photographs the motorcycle that is parked in front. When he goes down to throw out the garbage, ‘click’, he immortalizes the sunset between the containers, authentic mines of urban anthropology. Postcards of his day-to-day life, a day-to-day that takes place mainly in Trinitat Vella, his neighbourhood, but not only, and that, over the years -the constancy of his work is indeed a trademark of the house- has become in the beautiful artistic project ‘The other city’, that waits inaugurate the course that now begins in some equipment uptown (and if nothing goes wrong, so it will be), the reason for the project.
With a selection of images taken from 2018 -published on his Instagram profile as he was capturing them- a proposal was worked on that a year ago he sent to a lot of civic centers in which they ignored him. Nobody said it was easy. “a lot of bureaucracy, many fill out this form and… nothing; I got a little discouraged & rdquor ;, he confesses. A little, but never enough.
Given that the official route was practically a dead end, being a complete unknown outside Trini -in his neighborhood he is the king-, he thought of a plan B. It was then that he came up with create the physical postcards, really, like the ones you buy at the promenade with photographs of the most groped Barcelona. He spent the little money he had on making some “super cute” postcards. (in his words, but that’s how it is). Postcards that, from the front, were one of the photos in the exhibition -which runs in addition to his Trini, the Trinitat Nova Baró de Viver and La Prosperitat – and, behind, he wrote them by hand and signed them with a clever “Greetings from l’altra ciutat, the other city”.
“I would like you to meet her”
Hello, I am writing you this postcard from the other Barcelona, the least known part of the city. I have created an expo to explain this part of the world and I would like you to get to know it & rdquor ;, he wrote in each of them. Instead of a stamp, it’s romantic, but it’s a type of her time, a QR that links to your websitein which a large part of the images that make up the exhibition are posted.
He filled his backpack with his postcards, took two buses and, ‘google maps’ in hand, toured the civic centers of the upper area, spaces in which he is clear that he wants to exhibit this work. The result was the same as with the emails: “They told me, send us an email with the proposal. And I told them, yes, yes, I already sent you the email. Since it didn’t work, I made these postcards. Can’t I leave here?” explains the multifaceted young man, soul of the youth cultural entity of Trinitat Vella Old Suitcases. magic exists
But did he give up? No. On July 22 he launched plan C: “I’ll put it on Twitter and let the sun rise in Antequera.” “This project makes me especially excited. I think it is something that is very good and that people may like it, so I resorted to the classic ‘Twitter do your magic'”, he continues Ruiz. And she looks like she did. After sharing on networks a “Hello! I’m looking for an exhibition space to launch my new exhibition project for autumn, a series of 30 photographs of the less photographed Barcelona.Help me with a RT?”.
Soon, Ruiz he received a call – a call, someone speaking to him, no message at all! – from the head of exhibitions at a civic center in the city, and there is another who has also already contacted him.
Related news
The easy thing for Ruiz would have been to take his proposal to the civic center of Trinity Vella, practically the second home of this young man, very active in the associative and neighborhood life of ‘la Trini’, but the objective of this project was precisely to get out of the neighbourhood. Show the neighborhood to other residents of Barcelona for which it is an absolutely remote place. “What I didn’t want was to stay in Baró de Viver or in Trinitat Vella. The value of this exhibition is that people from the upper area see it. I have always thought that inequality is based on rich people not knowing about poor people. For example, in fiction. We have very few references of popular neighborhoods. In Spanish fiction I can think of ‘Aída’ and little else. There are no referents of the popular neighborhoods, of the dissident families, of what happens to us on a day-to-day basis; and this exhibition wants to show that”, sums up the artist, convinced that there are many Barcelonans who do not know where Trinitat Vella.
‘The other city’ seeks to make visible that other city without pretensions. Pay attention to the Barcelona which is not often paid attention to. Going down to detail. To the neighbor sitting on the bench or the girl playing ball. “On the one hand, there is the issue that many residents of Barcelona do not know the rest of Barcelona. They believe that Barcelona is only their Eixample neighborhood and they don’t see beyond it; and, on the other hand, in general, there is the fact that historically Barcelona, with its Olympic past and all this movement, has always been sold as Montjuïc, Plaza de Catalunyathe Plaza de Espanya, the Sagrada Familia, Park Güell and little else,” he exaggerates.