“In our family we have never been one to celebrate many things, nor cultural traditions”.
Living and growing up in a denatured environment, such as a completely impersonal urbanization due to real estate development in the early 90’s and growing up in a family without much cultural roots, makes it difficult to link or adapt to certain customary traditions.
This lack of memory or fragmented identity is equated to the fragmented memory of Blanca’s paternal grandmother who will suffer certain episodes of cognitive deterioration. This grandmother, the Murcian grandmother, is the one who made the only scarf that Blanca has in the 90’s, when she was little. Like many of our grandmothers, they spent years embroidering the typical white flowers in woolen thread in the thick fabric characteristic of the orchard slippers”.
What makes someone belong to a place?, How important is it to remember your roots? What is the feeling of belong to a place?
Through the life of the artist Blanca Galindo, her family relationships and how she rebuilt her legacy.
By creation of a garment based on a traditional dress that her grandmother made for Blanca, who now has dementia.
The reconstruction of this piece has been a process and has entailed different stages of family reconnection with my grandmother (who did it even though she doesn’t remember it), with illness, with family, with personal history and with belonging to a place. and readaptation of cultural patterns.
This multidisciplinary piece aims to claim the adaptation and transformation of vernacular clothing as a family and historical legacy and as a sample of the idiosyncrasy of the Region and inherited tradition.
Throughout the generations, women have traditionally woven special garments for their daughters and granddaughters and these pieces, due to their quality and symbolism, become part of a legacy“.
At Heritage we created a new piece with a new meaning from the children’s slip, hand in hand with Murcian artisans (Mantekillah and Ladydilema). The reconstruction of this piece has been a process and has entailed different stages of family reconnection with Blanca’s grandmother, with the family, with the personal history of each one and with belonging to a place and readaptation of cultural patterns. The new piece of clothing, did not leave any genre, is accompanied by a mixture of graphic documentation, the reflection of the image around the family archive and the heritage of the city’s textile clothing.
Through a new textile piece reinterpreted from this family legacy, that is not only a physical but also an emotional inheritance, we will approach this textile tradition of the artisans and designers of the region to update the traditional imaginary of the Region of Murcia.
History, through the materials that remain, are the result of the accumulation of time, these reminiscences allow us to travel through time to reveal secrets of the place to which we belong.
The ultimate purpose of this piece is to vindicate the vernacular clothing made from mothers to children, from grandmothers to children as a transgenerational and transsignificant legacy.
The new piece of clothing did not leave any gender, we have worked on it with @m.mantekillah and also with @ladydilemalive who has embroidered the title inside.
David Simon Martret & Blanca Galindo talk to Le Gist about their Heritage & Legacy project and what means to them.
“During the pandemic, we found ourselves undergoing quarantine in Murcia, in Molina de Segura, in the family home where Blanca had spent much of her childhood and adolescence until she was 18 years old.
This period, in addition to being complicated for many reasons, has served as a framework and space for some of the later projects, such as Heritage / Legacy”.
Blanca Galindo and David Simón are the photographers who have worked under the pseudonym Leafhopper since 2013 with shared authorship.
They dedicate special attention to the gestation of identity and reflection addition to his social concerns in articles for media such as Vice, Playground, Yorokobu, Yet Magazine, Huck Magazine, Libération, Fisheye Magazine, La Mono, Neo2 or El País.
Photos are by @leafhopperproject . The photograph presenting it is by Diana @dididynamite
