Desde Mi Balcón / From My Balcony
Bosque Gallery outdoor exhibition space
The National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) Visual Arts Program, in collaboration with Instituto Cervantes of Albuquerque and the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain in Washington, D. C. presents “Desde Mi Balcón/From My Balcony,” a new exhibit on view April 8 through Sept. 10, 2021, in the Bosque Gallery outdoor exhibition space.
This traveling exhibition consists of 28 large-format photographs (80 x 70 centimeters) of day-to-day situations, images that could be seen from windows and balconies, taken by ordinary citizens of Spain last year during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
PhotoEspaña, the International Festival of Photography and Visual Arts of Madrid, aware of the role that balconies and windows could play in the early days of a national stay-at-home order, launched a call through social media to Spaniards who wanted to share their images during the quarantine. More than 60,000 submissions were received and the 23rd edition of the festival was inaugurated with exhibitions in 50 cities across Spain.
“No matter where you are from, the images exhibited in ‘Desde Mi Balcón’ draws you in and certainly provide often emotional and humorous reflection on the experiences the world has gone through during the past year or more,” said Tey Marianna Nunn, director of the Art Museum and Visual Arts Program at the NHCC. “They are poignant reminders of the importance of place, communities, family, and connection and all the ways these necessities manifest themselves.”
The original PhotoEspaña call for artists eloquently captured this timely theme: “Windows, balconies function as we have seen throughout art history as a separator between the interior (and personal) space and the outside world. But also as a source of longing and freedom. Confinement and infinity. Immediacy and transience.”
“Quarantine, isolation, and stay-at-home orders vary immensely depending of where home is,” said Josefa González Mariscal, Executive Director of the NHCC. “’Desde Mi Balcón/From My Balcony’ allows us to see how Spain, where the population density is more than 10 times that of New Mexico, experienced the COVID-19 confinement.”
“Desde Mi Balcón/From My Balcony” was first on exhibit in the United States on the facade of the Spanish Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Inaugurated this past October, the Bosque Gallery makes use of 730 feet of fencing along the western border of the NHCC campus, facing the Paseo del Bosque Trail, to present exhibitions that rotate among the key program areas of the NHCC – History, Literary Arts, Visual Arts, and Performing Arts – and include topics that support the Center’s mission to preserve, promote, and advance Hispanic culture, arts, and humanities.