PALOMA POLO. EL BARRO DE LA REVOLUCIÓN

CURATED BY JUAN DE NIEVES
 

El Barro de la Revolución comprises some of the works created by Paloma Polo (Madrid, 1983) after her long stay, or rather her “personal and political immersion” in the Philippines since 2013. It is precisely the last of those works—a film lasting approximately 2 hours 35 minutes—what gives title to the show and functions as its connecting line, while at the same time giving rise to many of the social and political reflections present in other works by Polo during the time she spent in the Philippines.
 

One of those works, Unrest (2015), already dealt with the forms of resistance and the struggles to defend the right to the earth by Filipino indigenous communities against the government of the country and its allies within the monopoly of global capitalism. The film talks about resistance and solidarity through a polyphony of voices committed to the social transformation of the Philippines. Polo’s commitment and involvement with political resistance organisations in the country and abroad, opened up the possibility of submerging herself in the revolutionary underground.

El Barro de la Revolución takes place in the tropical forest in the Philippines and comments, without the usual mandate of the camera, on the military, social, political, affective and educational activities of one of the guerrilla units Polo joined as yet another member. A shared project, full of revolutionary comradeship, that develops a narrative in which the everydayness of routine tasks takes on extraordinary political and poetic import. In other words, and from our perspective as spectators, we are, once again, questioned about the indissoluble condition of the intimate and personal within the realm of the political.

RELATED ACTIVITIES

Performative visit to exhibition: Saturday at 18:30. July - October at 19:00. Closed for visits during August.