Alberto Baraya. Llatina i Mestral

The project “Llatina i Mestral”, presented by Alberto Baraya as part of Biennal B, is based on a performative action in which the artist paints in situ on a sail. The sail is transformed into a canvas while simultaneously serves as a support for a double journey—physical on the sea and iconographic or conceptual—and the island of Mallorca becomes the stage.

Alberto Baraya continues a body of work that began with his project “Vento” for the Museum of Pontevedra. If “Vento” referred to the force of the wind that propels the sail, “Llatina i Mestral” offers a nod to technical terms specific to navigation: llatina refers to the lateen sail used in this project, and is the most widely used traditional sail in the Balearic Islands, and mestral [mistral] is one of the winds that affect the islands: a cold, dry and quite strong wind that can become stormy. Others call the mistral “the good fairy”, because it clears the skies. Joined by the interjection i, “Llatina i Mestral” suggests a new story that is yet to come.

This work, which merges sailing and painting, allows us to recover the pictorial tradition of landscape painting and redefines plein air painting practices. It also references certain conceptual painting experiences by confronting the sails of a moving ship and painting while sailing. In the artist’s words, “If the process of a journey begins with the conception of an idea or the creation of a utopia in our minds before departing, this project allows the formation of that image between the port of departure and the port of arrival. The image becomes reality (a painting) during the journey. Upon arrival, we will probably be able to confirm that this image was, indeed, a necessary illusion.”

The formal result of the project is on display at the Museu Marítim de Mallorca-Museu de la Mar in Port de Sóller, reflecting the intention of Biennal B and its promoters—Es Baluard Museu and Consell de Mallorca—to showcase the island’s cultural richness through interdisciplinary creative projects. These initiatives foster collaboration between artists and craft professionals committed to the trades, traditions, and landscape, as well as with key institutions for the promotion of the Balearic heritage and its creative ecosystem. The exhibition features paintings made during the navigation and a video documenting the true story behind: an action in which the artist takes on the challenge of painting a sail over seven meters long while sailing.

 

Alberto Baraya (Bogotá 1968), visual artist, traveler and researcher. He studied Fine Arts at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and specialized in Aesthetics and Art Theory at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Since 2002 he has been developing the “Herbarium of Artificial Plants”, a parodic project of collections and “studies” of fake botany, made of wire and silk, made in China, through which Baraya tries to recompose a new identity in the relations between humans and nature.

Following the principle “The expedition as one of the Fine Arts” and appropriating the scientific methodology of collecting as a strategy, Baraya has undertaken expeditions around the world in search of evidence of the transformation of biological and cultural ecosystems. Through the use of traditional techniques of representation or through installation, appropriation or performance, his works focuses on the observation of phenomena of biological exoticism or on the aesthetic acts of our everyday ecosystem, thus linking his proposals with contemporary ecological concerns.

His artificial collections and photographic works have been presented at the art Biennals of São Paulo (2006), Venice (2009), Berlin (2014) and Shanghai (2014 and 2019), and can be found in a number of public and private collections.