23.06 2011
An old, run down house shapes the terrain of Habitando, a lighting installation by Luisa Alvarez. Bright, colourful rolls wrapped around remnants of furnishing shape a playful, glossy kaleidoscope that takes over the place becoming the apparent centre of attention. One might expect that the installation would conceal the ruined residence in an attempt to ‘sanitise’ its aesthetics. Instead, the installation tampers with a balance of contradictions centred on the juxtaposition of the house’s decay and the installation’s joyful seventies aesthetics, a contradiction of light and darkness, plastic and plastered stone, new and old, glossy and matt, playful rejoice and sadness. Yet small humorous and fun details leave us with a feeling of optimism.
“We already have our video. In it, we wanted to embody, through an illumination project our work and creativity.
In this particular project, we borrowed an abandoned house for some hours, and using its rooms among other elements that we came across, made it inhabited with light.
In order to give the house some life, we chose light, color and hundreds of silhouettes of people that emerge from various rolls of recycled negatives. From the beginning, we decided to take advantage of the natural light coming in through the windows, and to play with that light. Besides allowing us to experiment, this idea was used as a starting point to inhabit little by little the space and in doing so, develop and bring to fruition what in the end would be the focus of the project. There was one room in the house whose walls were burned and totally desolate. Here we decided to create using faces and color, furnishings that are just as indispensable in a home as chairs and brighten it up.
For a while, I’ve been experimenting with used, disposable, photographic materials imprinted with silhouettes of people and this idea appeals to me enormously. I thought that it would be ideal to use here and it could give the meaning of personal and human concept that I was looking for in this project. At the same time, the vitality that is transmitted from the colors of the negatives of which it is composed together with the good translucent qualities that it possesses cause it to have a very suggestive and versatile behaviour in the presence of light.
This is how it all began. In the video and photographic report, the entire process and then finally the project can be seen.”