MEMENTO. A project around the memory and emotional heritage of a district through tattooing

MEMENTO "The bodies that inhabit Arganzuela through tattooing" is an artistic creation and mediation project carried out by Helena Gallego, Iris Hernández and Niko Barrena, which takes place between February and November 2019 in collaboration with Intermediae-Matadero Madrid and the Board Municipal Arganzuela District within the Mirador Arganzuela program.

After a mediation process and various workshops that sought to tell a story of the neighborhood through the tattoos of its neighbors, MEMENTO presents the work of a year in a photographic, sound and audiovisual exhibition in the La Lonja room in the Casa del Reloj in order to make visible, value and sublimate all the stories, memories, tattoos and scars collected.

MEMENTO is an exhibition and project about the memory and emotional heritage of a district through tattooing. The exhibition summarizes the stories of the people of the Arganzuela district who attended the sessions, sharing the memory of the drawings that each one had engraved on the skin.

By understanding the body as “architecture, skeleton and viscera of a social construction” (Ricard Huerta), MEMENTO generates a dialogue that speaks of the corporeal and emotional visual heritage of Arganzuela; an exhibition that shows the bodies of the neighborhood as a scene of their memory and diversity.

The participants who attended the workshops were between the ages of 20 and 30, "you can't talk about such a neighborhood," Gallego explains. The reflections during the workshops have led them to explain a generation rather than a neighborhood.

The project that can now be seen throughout November in La Lonja of La Casa del Reloj (Matadero-Madrid), presents a photographic sample of the skins that have been part of MEMENTO during the month of September 2019, accompanied by the associated emotional heritage in the format of their stories .; two pieces of video art by the ladder spirit collective and the artist Chaki Medina; two sound pieces by musicians and producers Jose Tena, Óscar Moreno "Ojo" and Javier Tasio.

With a methodology based on the coast line paradox, whereby a coastal perimeter lacks a length due to its fractal nature, when we talk about identity, memory or emotions of a community, these tend to be infinite if we pay attention to the plurality of identities, memories and emotions. This allows us to reflect on the change in affective models and the way of remembering.

The tattoo fulfills both a personal and social function: they are tangible memories, they are the memory in the skin of a person but also an example of the social and cultural dynamics of a given community at a specific time. By turning away the tattoo of gang members and de-stigmatizing aesthetic practice, we can understand body ornamentation not as a crime, but as an empowerment of the same body.

The body is understood as a political territory that transcends the sphere of the private and generates a tool for reading the community of which it is a part.