Typically you may expect to be praying the novena and asking God for absolution of your dastardly sins here in this sprawling compound called The Konvent near Barcelona. While no one would stop you today, you may also wish to check out a number of new installations throughout the many buildings by Street Artists.
The Roman Catholic former convent hosted 50 or so artists over the last couple of years to transform the space, perhaps to reinterpret its original charge in a modern light, perhaps just to ready the compound for commercial, cultural, and community pursuits of the owners.
Certainly the decaying spaces and austere aesthetic is inviting, calming, possibly frightening, depending on your associations. Now they are home for music, dance, theatre, film festivals, and artist residencies – often offered only in Catalan but some also in European Spanish.
As you walk through the spaces you are welcomed by these works by artists, many of them at one time or another categorized as Street Artists, whose voices now usher in a new era of contemplation and perhaps internal exploration.
Our thanks to photogapher and BSA contributor Lluis Olive Bulbena for sharing these images from El Konvent.
For more information about El Konvent please Click HERE
One of the most active artists in the streets creating in a variety of styles of work that lean toward realism and sometimes tilt into fantasy and exaggerated caricature the London born Waknine decided to do this mural on Selva de Mar to speak to the pure human factors in a refugee crisis that grips much of the developed and developing world.
The new work captures the raw human emotions of fear, desperation and distress of people afloat on rough waters. Somehow Waknine also brings dignity to the harrowing scene and references classical painting, as he has on walls in his travels to countries like Mexico, France, Israel, Germany, and England.
As some societies open their doors to help those fleeing war and imminent danger it seems unthinkable to do anything less for the least of these.