JUAN-PEDRO FABRA GUEMBERENA

Moheda​ is the working title of a long term interdisciplinary art project that take multiple forms, materials and strategies. The subjects of the project are: memory, myths and identity-creation of a particular culture/ site/geography. The starting point of my research for Moheda is the actual ruin that is now the abandoned (and obliterated) refugee camp of the town of Moheda located in the southern parts of Sweden. The site was inaugurated in 1966 and was the first refugee camp in Sweden. In the 60’s the camp mainly received labor migrants from Yugoslavia and Greece. During the 70’s it accommodated mainly political refugees from South America. I myself arrived at this very camp in the late 70’s as a child fleeing with my parents from the dictatorship in Uruguay.)

Taller Rojo/Red Studio

The language in this part can be described as ​metaphysic​ and ​analytic. It is the result of a process that started when I intended to render a painting in scale 1:1 of the four walls of the room in the barrack that I slept in Moheda camp. Sinziana Ravini and I have been in dialogue for over ten years (we have also worked together in the exhibition​ University of Disaster​ for the Bosnia Herzegovina Pavilion in Venice Biennale 2017) Sinziana is a psychoanalyst and I asked for advice in relation to the project. Ravini became interested and involved, and we decided to commence this alteration of project together - she as an analyst and me as patient.​ Wanting to deconstruct and de-charge these surfaces I found myself in front of a visual language I never used before: abstract painting. The notion of starting to work as an abstract painter came with a lot of questions and obstacles for myself, connected with the historic burden of both painting and abstract art. I was never interested in abstract art as a form, I was drawn to it conceptually and to the idea of vanishing or camouflaging imagery. To approach this work as a regular therapeutic task was liberating and cathartic.