La mina

The ‘troubled’ quarter La Mina in the outskirts of Barcelona was built during the ’70s. The government sold apartments in box-buildings to the new inhabitants, selling them outright with the help of cheap credits, rather than keeping them as social housing. This was a decision with a double edge for both the government and the inhabitants. On the one hand, the inhabitants, being owners of their apartments, cannot be moved out so easily. But on the other hand, this reinforces the ghetto condition. I worked in the cultural center of the quarter, in a modernist building that has been out of use for quite some years. The ceiling of the building is covered with a grid for lights. I repeated the grid form using barbed wire. Together with four women from the neighborhood, Isabel Moreno Carmona, Antonia Martin Cuesta, Carmen Amaya Flores, Alicia Vila Reyes, I enveloped the barbed wire in wool squares, forming fields of wool. The performance lasted five hours.