The artist Francesc Ruiz has been chosen to respond to the challenge of drought and depopulation in the Non plus ultra project.
Over the next few months, it will develop an artistic proposal, in collaboration with a group of young people from the south of Badajoz, which will allow us to think of exciting futures that overcome the imaginary of desertification and abandonment of the land.
The project, which brings together young people to seek healthier ways of relating to a land marked by extractivism, has selected artist Francesc Ruiz to develop an artistic commission to be presented next spring.
Since the end of 2023 and together with the mediation work of Jose Iglesias García-Arenal, the group Non plus ultra has been exploring the narratives of desertification that cross the Extremaduran soil and the problem of depopulation. After this phase, they looked for an artist with whom to develop a project that imagines new forms of connection and logistics, and to reverse the colonial logics that have historically marked the relationship between the countryside and the city. Francesc Ruiz's work stands out for his ability to read the historical complexity of territories, the use of humour and fiction to intervene collective narratives, as well as the attention he has paid in his recent works to the circulation of goods and the creation of alternative logistical imaginaries, key points in responding to the challenge of Non plus ultra.
One of the concerns of the communities in the south of Badajoz is the territorial disconnection, the abandonment of communication systems, in the face of investment in projects that put the region's water resources at risk, such as the increase in irrigation, solar farms or the threat of mining. The project will have to produce an artistic proposal that connects these two concerns: depopulation and drought. The format will be defined over the coming months through meetings with the Non plus ultra group and other participatory processes. The first of these activities will be a workshop to generate “collective counter-geographies” and share desires about the past and the future of the territory, on Saturday 26 October in Los Santos de Maimona.
The world as a large printed surface on which to intervene
In Francesc Ruiz's work, the world is drawn, composed, published and distributed, critically occupying the spaces of printed capitalism. Expanded comics, the informational architectures of kiosks, manga porntopias and contemporary logistics are some of the places of intervention from which he has developed his work over the last 20 years, creating installations and publications that are inserted into specific contexts, transforming the collective narratives that generate public space.
His work has been shown in different national and international art centres and museums: EACC (Castelló), CA2M (Madrid), IVAM (València), MACBA (Barcelona), Gasworks (London), FRAC PACA (Marseille), Weserburg Museum (Bremen) and in biennials such as Venice Biennale 2015, Götteborg Biennale 2017, Momentum Biennale, Moss, Norway in 2019, Busan Biennale, South Korea, in 2020 or Triennale de Dunkerque in 2023. In addition, she has alternated her individual artistic practice with other collective projects such as the experimental curatorial team CREATURES (with Amanda Cuesta, Maribel López and Glòria Pou), the Radical Drawing Group (with Efrén Álvarez), the feminist and queer fanzine PIPA (with Maite Garbayo, ferranElOtro and Roger Adam), the Institute of Porn Studies (with Ona Bros and Lucía Egaña) or more recently the Amateur Porn Comic Group.
