CENTRO CULTURAL AMBULANTE [TRAVELING CULTURAL CENTER]

Workshop series with Gabriel Chaile with the students at EINA University Center of Design and Art of Barcelona.

Gabriel Chaile is part of a large family from northwestern Argentina, his blood is a mix of origins from different geographies and historical oppressions. In his home, the city of San Miguel de Tucumán, life has been organized around a clay oven to make bread: a functional architecture that feeds and unites, present in most cultures.

In Chaile’s sculpture-ovens there is an echo of the “popular pots” of Argentina, situations in which you go out into the street, and a group of people organize to add ingredients and thus be able to eat and feed. Women in general are the ones who lead these community meals at times when many cannot eat at home; either because there is no work, or because the one that is there is not enough. In addition to the sculptural power of Chaile’s works, one of the main concepts in his work is that of “need-based engineering”. He reflects on how, from an artistic perspective, objects and structures can be created that help improve the conditions of a certain extreme situation.

To do this, along with the artist, we have designed a workshop for students from EINA to explore the conceptualization, construction variables, and implementation of the Traveling Cultural Center, which stems from a prototype oven specifically dedicated to being a relational object that can be activated in different contexts. The workshop will consist of the planning, construction, resolution of doubts and commissioning of a mobile oven from an existing prototype. Work will be done around a specific and situated social need or challenge, continuously with the same students to delve into the processes.

This 4-week long workshop is aimed at students interested in topics such as the functionality of the precarious, sustainability, cooperativism, the relationship with decolonial issues and all kinds of social projects. Moreover, The Green Parrot and EINA will host 3 separate public meetings with the artist during his stay in Barcelona, as well as a public presentation of the finished collaborative project.

Gabriel Chaile (Tucumán, 1985) lives and works between Buenos Aires and Lisbon. He graduated in Fine Arts from the National University of Tucumán. In 2009 he received a scholarship from the Foundation YPF and carried out the Artists Program of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires.