Ernest Hemingway first arrived in Valencia in the summer of 1925, following bullfighting legend Cayetano Ordóñez from Pamplona, with the intent to keep “the party going,” so to speak. He found himself in the center of the city at the Hotel Reina Victoria, with a balcony that gave him a panorama of the bustling town below. He was enamored. “In Valencia, it’s damned stupendous at the beach or in the city to eat a melon washed down with a real cold jug of beer,” he wrote, and in that spirit, began his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, on that same balcony. Hemingway, the master of short prose and vivid precision, was nevertheless possessed with an eye for the grand view, a sweeping insight regarding his time in Spain. So immersed in the atmosphere, he wrote while absorbing the surrounding cultural noise. I arrived in Valencia during the 19-day Fallas festival, culminating in what I’d define as a riveting travel week, where I couldn’t help but dream of my favorite writer, his history, and imagining where he might have luxuriated over a cold beer on a warm Valencian evening.
I, too, stayed at the Hotel Reina Victoria, overlooking Plaça de l’Ajuntament and the main Fallas sculpture of the great Valencian street artist, Escif, whom I am here to visit and share in his landmark project. To put it mildly, the annual Las Fallas of Valencia is idiosyncratic, irreverent, and wonderfully serious. Fallas, historically, stems from an old carpenters’ tradition of celebrating the arrival of spring by burning their leftover and unused materials in the street as a sort of ritual of rebirth and the dawn of a new season. Every year from March 1 through 19, the city now bubbles with the energy of over 400 fallas built around the city, commissioned by neighborhood districts, and resulting in towering monuments of animated commentary. Closing out the ceremony, they are all ignited into burning symbols, a clearing before the start of spring, which encourages a friendly bit of ruckus among the hundreds of thousands of people swelling the city. This, too, is a dichotomy; massive fires burn around the city in what sounds and appears to be destruction and yet represents rebirth.
I arrive in Valencia in the early afternoon and am escorted directly to Escif ’s work, an experience I found to be an almost mea culpa of the pandemic’s effect on our lives. I was supposed to visit in 2020 for this same purpose, to see Escif ’s work go up in flames, though, of course, it was canceled, and yet in 2024, Escif was the city’s selection once again.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1369171671/1715886556/articles/Zbg3-z-TE1716206388362/1111161111.jpg]
In front of the Ajuntament de València and to the left of the Font de la Plaça de l’Ajuntament, tower two white doves, symbols of peace, fight over, or carry, what appears to be an olive branch to the skies above. Or is it being brought down to earth? Are the birds being held down by these multi-story wooden structures to which they’re bound, caged, and unable to escape? Surrounding this struggle are a series of cartoonish, pop-cultural, political, and universally-reflective sculptures, slightly larger-than-life but not quite so intimidating.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1369171671/1715886556/articles/Zbg3-z-TE1716206388362/7171177171.jpg]
All these elements are jarring, contradictory, and almost feel random. Walking through the square, teenage girls and adult women wear traditional regalia, a mix of centuries-old dress and hair styles that could be the past and future in conflation. Overhead, a booming fireworks display, here known as a “mascletà,” pounds both the mind, ears, and heart as rhythmic explosions create an atmosphere of controlled chaos and celebratory elation. The decibel level reaches near 120, testing your ability to make a clear decision about what you’re seeing and hearing. Your heart vibrates. Your teeth ache. Your eyes shake. It’s 2 p.m., and the mascletà lasts five minutes, yet the energy lasts for hours. There's a contradiction between joy and violence that is unexpected to the senses. There is the sound, the sights, and there is this fury.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1369171671/1715886556/articles/Zbg3-z-TE1716206388362/1711711717.jpg]
Knowing how Escif has made work over the years, whether illegal street pieces, murals, or his paintings and drawings, part of me thinks that this delay for his Fallas was more poignant. The war in Gaza, for which Escif and his team started the Unmute Gaza project in late 2023, is evident even though works were planned before the war began. Escif likes to have the viewer think about the malleability of truth and opinion, where contradiction is part of Western life no matter how well-intentioned. At the heart of this installation, two doves of peace fight over an olive branch, and together, go up in flames. When I spoke with Escif about this, standing beneath the doves as the final positions for surrounding sculptures were being mapped, he spoke about worldwide tension and the omnipresent forces of good, noting later, “Two doves, one branch. War implies selfishness and rejection; peace implies empathy and acceptance. War separates us; Peace unites us. Fear and Love. Two peace doves fighting over an olive branch.” I couldn’t help but think of the famous line from Mexican poet and academic César A. Cruz when he said, “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” Escif does just that.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1369171671/1715886556/articles/Zbg3-z-TE1716206388362/1711777661.jpg]
Again, dichotomy. In Valencia, I found the romance of its historic city center, swirling with the distant smell of cigarette smoke mixed with the sweet scent of orange blossoms in the air. The clinking of beer glasses echoes amongst the winding streets, intense conversation from outdoor tapas bars. Brutalist architecture intersects with the Baroque. After experiencing the booming mascletà, I enjoyed the expected: paella and a half-pint (or two) of beer. Our host, David, took us to Casa Baldo, an indoor-outdoor cafe that probably hasn’t changed since its establishment in 1915. The atmosphere is noisy, lively, and fun, as if the city is fully synchronized with the Fallas buzz. I’m fully into it, consumed in absorbing so much time thinking about Hemingway and his love for this city, and David says the magic words: “Let’s go to the museum.” We head to the IVAM (Institut Valencià d’Art Modern—Valencian Institute of Modern Art), which is adorned with an Escif mural on its large back wall, and features a beautifully brutalist interior. The museum is home to an incredible collection of works by modernist sculptor Julio González, a man who pushed iron to its limits. The IVAM was designed by Carlos Salvadores and Emilio Jiménez as the first modern art museum in Spain, and though only built in 1989, it has its own unique place in the city’s old quarter. We close the night at a wine bar, Boucan Winebar, and, once again, I can’t help but hear the distant echo of Hemingway when he wrote that “Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.” It’s...
I, too, stayed at the Hotel Reina Victoria, overlooking Plaça de l’Ajuntament and the main Fallas sculpture of the great Valencian street artist, Escif, whom I am here to visit and share in his landmark project. To put it mildly, the annual Las Fallas of Valencia is idiosyncratic, irreverent, and wonderfully serious. Fallas, historically, stems from an old carpenters’ tradition of celebrating the arrival of spring by burning their leftover and unused materials in the street as a sort of ritual of rebirth and the dawn of a new season. Every year from March 1 through 19, the city now bubbles with the energy of over 400 fallas built around the city, commissioned by neighborhood districts, and resulting in towering monuments of animated commentary. Closing out the ceremony, they are all ignited into burning symbols, a clearing before the start of spring, which encourages a friendly bit of ruckus among the hundreds of thousands of people swelling the city. This, too, is a dichotomy; massive fires burn around the city in what sounds and appears to be destruction and yet represents rebirth.
I arrive in Valencia in the early afternoon and am escorted directly to Escif ’s work, an experience I found to be an almost mea culpa of the pandemic’s effect on our lives. I was supposed to visit in 2020 for this same purpose, to see Escif ’s work go up in flames, though, of course, it was canceled, and yet in 2024, Escif was the city’s selection once again.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1369171671/1715886556/articles/Zbg3-z-TE1716206388362/1111161111.jpg]
In front of the Ajuntament de València and to the left of the Font de la Plaça de l’Ajuntament, tower two white doves, symbols of peace, fight over, or carry, what appears to be an olive branch to the skies above. Or is it being brought down to earth? Are the birds being held down by these multi-story wooden structures to which they’re bound, caged, and unable to escape? Surrounding this struggle are a series of cartoonish, pop-cultural, political, and universally-reflective sculptures, slightly larger-than-life but not quite so intimidating.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1369171671/1715886556/articles/Zbg3-z-TE1716206388362/7171177171.jpg]
All these elements are jarring, contradictory, and almost feel random. Walking through the square, teenage girls and adult women wear traditional regalia, a mix of centuries-old dress and hair styles that could be the past and future in conflation. Overhead, a booming fireworks display, here known as a “mascletà,” pounds both the mind, ears, and heart as rhythmic explosions create an atmosphere of controlled chaos and celebratory elation. The decibel level reaches near 120, testing your ability to make a clear decision about what you’re seeing and hearing. Your heart vibrates. Your teeth ache. Your eyes shake. It’s 2 p.m., and the mascletà lasts five minutes, yet the energy lasts for hours. There's a contradiction between joy and violence that is unexpected to the senses. There is the sound, the sights, and there is this fury.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1369171671/1715886556/articles/Zbg3-z-TE1716206388362/1711711717.jpg]
Knowing how Escif has made work over the years, whether illegal street pieces, murals, or his paintings and drawings, part of me thinks that this delay for his Fallas was more poignant. The war in Gaza, for which Escif and his team started the Unmute Gaza project in late 2023, is evident even though works were planned before the war began. Escif likes to have the viewer think about the malleability of truth and opinion, where contradiction is part of Western life no matter how well-intentioned. At the heart of this installation, two doves of peace fight over an olive branch, and together, go up in flames. When I spoke with Escif about this, standing beneath the doves as the final positions for surrounding sculptures were being mapped, he spoke about worldwide tension and the omnipresent forces of good, noting later, “Two doves, one branch. War implies selfishness and rejection; peace implies empathy and acceptance. War separates us; Peace unites us. Fear and Love. Two peace doves fighting over an olive branch.” I couldn’t help but think of the famous line from Mexican poet and academic César A. Cruz when he said, “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” Escif does just that.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1369171671/1715886556/articles/Zbg3-z-TE1716206388362/1711777661.jpg]
Again, dichotomy. In Valencia, I found the romance of its historic city center, swirling with the distant smell of cigarette smoke mixed with the sweet scent of orange blossoms in the air. The clinking of beer glasses echoes amongst the winding streets, intense conversation from outdoor tapas bars. Brutalist architecture intersects with the Baroque. After experiencing the booming mascletà, I enjoyed the expected: paella and a half-pint (or two) of beer. Our host, David, took us to Casa Baldo, an indoor-outdoor cafe that probably hasn’t changed since its establishment in 1915. The atmosphere is noisy, lively, and fun, as if the city is fully synchronized with the Fallas buzz. I’m fully into it, consumed in absorbing so much time thinking about Hemingway and his love for this city, and David says the magic words: “Let’s go to the museum.” We head to the IVAM (Institut Valencià d’Art Modern—Valencian Institute of Modern Art), which is adorned with an Escif mural on its large back wall, and features a beautifully brutalist interior. The museum is home to an incredible collection of works by modernist sculptor Julio González, a man who pushed iron to its limits. The IVAM was designed by Carlos Salvadores and Emilio Jiménez as the first modern art museum in Spain, and though only built in 1989, it has its own unique place in the city’s old quarter. We close the night at a wine bar, Boucan Winebar, and, once again, I can’t help but hear the distant echo of Hemingway when he wrote that “Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.” It’s...
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Juxtapoz (Digital) - 1 Issue, Summer 2024