Urban Monopoly

DosJotas’project relates artistic actions in the public space - in an independent and even illegal way- with the commercial routines of the art market and the bullying and selling of houses and other property, creating a parallelism between urban art and real estate speculation. The exhibition installation recreates the walls of a contemporary city plagued with signatures, stencils, posters, stickers; simulating those semi-abandoned spaces where there is practically no space left unpainted or untouched. Creating a sale game, all the intervened space will be sold in pieces 50x50 in different phases following, simulating and criticizing urban speculation.

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In 2016 I started living in the Lavapiés neighborhood and a few months later, he did too. N (a homeless person) settled on the street that I passed every day, that's how I began to observe and portray its constructions and changes while our relationship was also built.
N has inhabited this space, which is just 50 meters from the Swinton Gallery from 2016 to 2021.
Although N lived in the same space for 7 years, he was not visible to everyone's eyes, he blended in with the street, perhaps invisible when we passed by. Therefore, the photos of N's constructions have been printed on transparency... to perpetuate her ephemeral character, to allow her fusion with the environment, to claim the attention of the looking eye.
Each image is contained in already used frames, found, like the constructions that contained him, from materials he found.
The frames have been mounted perpendicular to the wall, it is easy to pass by without seeing the images they contain, to see them you have to change the usual perspective, make an effort to see them, if you really want to see.


Swinton Gallery · Madrid (Spain) · 2022