Drawing on a listening and interpretation of the Sala d’Art Jove Creació 2022 projects, Cartografies del foc is organised around two symbols, two elements: maps and fire.

Sala d’Art Jove functions as a map of the concerns and miseries of the region’s young people. Latent malaise is expressed in a seemingly isolated yet structurally connected manner. The projects analyse and demonstrate the violence of the system in which we live: a world asphyxiated by capital. They are all different flames, burning in the same fire.

The artist is a cartographer. A map is a means of comprehending reality, but it is always partial and powerless, and sometimes beautiful. Maps are glasses: they can alter the viewer’s gaze. Art alters the way they are perceived and, therefore, the action; this is their potential for social transformation.

Just as it is a cartographer’s duty to include and exclude elements from reality in order to help the receiver understand the land, the artists are aware of the what, the why, and the ethical implications of their work.

This first exhibition presents a set of projects focused on the gaze. A subjective and intimate approach, in which this sensitivity functions as a rebellion against forgetting. With a revolutionary tenderness, it seeks to capture moments, corners, bodies, movements and struggles, aiming to light a fire where there was once darkness. These works attempt to scratch the amnesia of the representation of certain elements of reality by means of artistic manifestation. They are maps of that which we do not want to forget.