Some 1,150 kilos of cement hide the figure of Federico García Lorca in the middle of a room. The poet’s hyperrealistic body, the work of conceptual artist Eugenio Merino, can only be seen through a small hole in the mass, transformed into a normal and simple bench, common in any city. Inside, many meanings illuminate the darkness in a game between past, present and future. “Public Bank”, as this artistic intervention is called, is loaded with the political meaning that has always accompanied one of the most recognized missing persons in the world.
On September 19, everyone will be able to sit on this unique bench. Under the seat, a symbol will be hidden, but also the flag of memory, of the fight against hate crimes and of the demand that Lorca formulated throughout his life for a freer and more egalitarian society. It will be at the ADN Galería, in Barcelona, accompanied by the voice of the actor Juan Diego Botto, who will provide a kind of soundtrack to the piece composed of what the man from Granada once said.
Lorca is no stranger to merino wool. A few months ago, the author of this new “counter-monument” already used the poet’s hyperrealist work for his artistic intervention in Madrid entitled “Ruina”. In it, the body of the Granada writer appeared under the ground, protected only by a transparent and walkable sheet of glass. This body and no other is the one that is now buried in cement, as certified before a notary. “Although Lorca is now completely hidden, the bank is functional. The idea is to generate a space that questions our past and makes us reflect on the foundations on which our present has been built, at a time when hate speech is increasing,” comments the artist.
In this way, the author of Poet in New York He appears and hides, they say he is there, but they do not see him, they pretend he is, but there is no space to honor his remains. Reality and art create here a magma that cries out for anti-fascism, anti-racism and anti-capitalism. “We know that Lorca was a symbol of all these struggles for his defense of black people in the United States or for his criticism of capitalism. This cement object may seem very abstract, but at the same time it is the representation of everything the poet was,” explains Merino.
The intention of highlighting these aspects of the immeasurable poet is not insignificant: “There is a certain theory that links Lorca to José Antonio Primo de Rivera, but it is a lie, even if the right continues to use it in its speeches. PP and Vox have used his figure to strip him of any ideal, calling him apolitical,” the artist explains.
A bank to connect with the missing
As we walk on a ground of which we are ignorant of what is hidden inside, a few centimeters underground, any visitor can now rest on this infinity that has become the non-existent tomb of Lorca. “The installation shows how our daily life is based on the crimes of the Franco regime that are still buried. It is estimated that there are more than 100,000 disappeared and scattered in the ditches because of Franco’s repression,” adds the conceptual artist.
Another idea present in “Public Bank” is the possibility that viewers will have to intervene. The bench is useful, they are the same ones that can be seen in many cities. In this way, if we did not dig beyond what we see, we would not be able to perceive the importance of knowing and ensuring the foundations on which our reality is based. As if it were a metaphor, Merino wants to “put people in contact with a missing person, with tens of thousands of missing people”, but also to demonstrate that another art, committed, political and unambiguous, perhaps very far from the purely commercial is possible.
The material as an ideology of transversality
Semíramis González, curator of the intervention, considers that “Banco Público” comes to question “the traditional forms of public and the hegemonic readings that, over time, have transformed the effectiveness of the monument, both formally and ideologically.” “While we sit on this bench, the material is also ideology. The cement here is much more than a simple volume. It is the metaphor of this asphalt on which we walk every day, on which we walk and under which there are more than 100,000 people in retaliation,” says the art historian.
She has been responsible for accompanying and complementing Merino, both in “Ruina” and today. “I have tried to ensure that LGTBI discourses, but also feminist ones, are intertwined in this aesthetic and political proposal that provides many stories from various places. It is important to remember that one of the reasons Lorca was killed was his homosexuality,” the curator emphasizes. Once again, Lorca is presented as an epithet for the disappeared, which gives this bench an aura of solemnity that leads to another dimension full of reflection and rest.
A body that is there but cannot be seen
Víctor Fernández, a Lorca expert who accompanied Merino in his process of documentation and maturation of the project, also had a say in the development of “Banco Público”. This cultural journalist points out that “no administration, at any level, neither right nor left, has considered clarifying once and for all what happened to the remains”. “The Ministry of the Interior has not declassified the documentation it has on his assassination, generated by the Franco regime itself”, he denounces.
This favorite student of historian Ian Gibson also reflects the hyperrealism of the body that Merino sculpted and already buried in cement: “What stands out most is the adaptation of the poet’s features to the time of his death. Physically, it is him, when Lorca is often represented by taking as a reference these photos of him as a young man, with the bow tie and the disheveled hair. In reality, the rebel soldiers assassinated Lorca at the age of 38.
From his point of view, “Banco Público” is more “powerful” than “Ruina”, because now the poet’s body is no longer even seen, but rather felt. In addition, Fernández praises the complement provided by Juan Diego Botto in the artistic intervention: “Although at the moment it does not exist, I am optimistic and I think that Lorca’s voice should be recorded in some radio archive. What we have here is a great actor reciting with some modifications the selection of texts that Merino, the actor Alberto San Juan and I have already made. In the texts recited, the public will be able to appreciate the fervent relationship of the native of Granada with anti-fascism through the manifestos he has signed, but also his political position through the interviews he has conducted.
The indissolubility of politics in Lorca
For Botto, knowing the poet in depth “means knowing what he thought about patriotism, as it appears in one of his youngest texts, his commitment to art and even knowing that his signature appeared in manifestos defending the Catalan language or in Manuel Azaña.” For this playwright, “Lorca’s words still resonate”, although he does not know “if it is an example that we have solved few things, that there are problems that seem endemic or that are simply related to human nature”.
Faced with the attempts of the Franco regime, first, and then of the right, to deprive Lorca of his most political halo, Botto believes that “it is very difficult to understand the work of the native of Granada if we separate it from his vision of the world and the commitment to justice, freedom and equality. Linking Lorca to the pretensions of the right can only be supported by “absolute ignorance and ignorance of what he was and what he captured in his work”, in the words of the Argentine actor who played Lorca in a successful play by his author, A moonless night.
“Public Bank” presents itself as a “counter-monument” that comes to occupy a space that cries out more for what it hides than for what it reveals. As if it were life itself, it is enough to dare to observe beyond what our eyes are capable of appreciating. Only in this way can we confront the motivations and interests of those who want memory to remain hidden, buried. Only in this way can we have a conscious position, as Lorca demonstrated in December 1934: “I will always be a partisan of those who have nothing, and even the tranquility of nothingness is denied to them.”
