Cabilla
TEA, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Spain
07 October 2022 - 08 October 2023
A project by Sol Calero with the participation of Ana Alenso, Archivo Lares, Rubén D'Hers, tropical papers, Ernesto Paredano, Lucía Pizzani, Armando Rosales and Christian Vinck.
"Cabilla" is the Spanish word for the cast-iron rods used in construction to reinforce concrete. The standardisation of this industrial element has made it ubiquitous. However, in Venezuela, cabilla is also used to refer to something that is good, strong, consistent, excellent, optimal. The word is thus materialized as a demonstration of how ideological imaginaries become the infrastructures in which we live.
The oil boom and intensive agricultural processes put Venezuela at the forefront of modernism in Latin America. Mass migration from the Canary Islands produced an economic transfer but also led to an exchange of images that inform different utopias and dystopias in both places.
This curatorial and installation project by Sol Calero was conceived in conjunction with the support and collaboration of a number of artists whose careers and lives are connected to Venezuela. The project traces the history of forced migrations and the feeling of rootlessness that reveals the flipside of modernity and the possibility of a shared identity.
Photos by Teresa Arozena.
