Reading and travelling are two actions that have always been closely linked, and in times of confinement this statement has become more evident than ever.

Piero’s journey to the MhiC also begins with a reading of poems’ collection of Solo Andata (One Way Ticket) by the Italian writer Erri de Luca. By chance, the book meets the painter, who translates on the canvas words that have a familiar tone for him.

I feel that it speaks of people who, like me, have desires, dream, enjoy, have dreams, cry, tremble, who can be accepted or excluded from their own environment.

Thus, begins a back and forth between words and painting. The words are transformed into colours which, as the work progresses, intersect, multiply and acquire different textures. As a result, Piero Sacchetto’s studio is filled, on those days in 2017, with shapeless paintings that speak to us of connections, aromas, memories, landscapes and transitions, the seed of Erri de Luca’s poems.

I let the colours begin to manifest themselves. The colours of damp or sunburnt earth, the red of oxides, of the light that takes different forms from protection to oblivion, of the white that can never be hidden, of the black tar that coats wood and transforms it into a boat...

This is how Erri de Luca’s voice mimics in the work of Piero Sacchetto, who sees his works as asking him to begin a journey like the one he has made with the reading of Solo Andata.

Solo Andata, the poet's book is becoming hidden behind my paintings and I am beginning to think that my paintings are also beginning their journey outside the studio.
Today they have crossed borders as only paintings can: in silence.
And it is in silence that they hope, like myself, that the gazes of the people who have to look at them will awaken in them as many questions as the reading of Erri de Luca's poems awakened in me one day.

Who is who?

Writer, journalist, and poet. Before becoming a writer, he had many kinds of jobs: lorry driver, mason, factory worker... He has also self-taught many languages. His first book, Not Now, Not Here (1989), tells the story of his childhood in Naples and has been translated into more than thirty languages. Since then, he has not stopped writing (essays, poetry, theatre...).
He is also a mountaineering enthusiast and contributes to national newspapers such as Corriere della Sera.


Piero Sacchetto (Pieve di Cento -Bologna-, 1950)

Painter and humanist. He has based his life on research and the creation of projects related to the field of primary education and pedagogy, focusing these disciplines on the world of the arts and museums. His experience has made him a reference in this field, which has been recognized in different projects and articles in specialized journals.
He has also been responsible for directing the creation of various artistic spaces in Bologna and for the realization of theatrical scenographies.

The exhibition Solo Andata (One Way Ticket) works aesthetically and ethically on the motifs linked to migratory movements that force people to leave towns, cities, and countries. For this reason, the exhibition, despite the strangeness of the times in which we live, is also at a migratory point since conceived as an itinerant exhibition, we can currently visit it at the Museu de la Vida Rural – Fundació Carulla in Espluga de Francolí.

Photos of the production of “Només d’anada” at the MhiC (gener, 2020).

We start the exhibition set-up, and the museum is surrounded by special music: laughter and conversations. The instruments create that, the meeting of the artist with the boys and girls from IES Barres I Ones and the boys from CRAE Kirikú, who are also working in the rooms with their respective projects. Altogether we were weaving a choral exhibition.

One of the e-mails between Lali Bosch and Piero Sacchetto shows us, once the confinement is over, the memories that those first days bring back to them when the exhibition was just an idea.

E-mails between Lali Bosch and Piero Sachetto before the opening of “Només d’anada” (MhiC, 2020).

The curator and the artist each working from their ateliers. 

Exhibition opening day of “One Way Ticket” on 25 January 2020. The inauguration was attended by all the participants and the musical performance of Guillem Roma and Alessio Arena..

At the same time, the MhiC hosted, within the context of the exhibition, four educational projects, developed by the students of the 3rd year of ESO from IES Barres i Ones and the young people from CRAE Kirikú, with the collaboration of the association A Bao A Qu.

The boys and girls of IES Barres i Ones at the installation of “Going upstairs, word by word”.

Participants:

Ahad Abdul, Evan Älvarez, Yanina Araujo, Gift Baidoo, Serek Casado, Ayman Dghoughi, Aryan Dogra, Salman Douas, Jorge Ferrel, Laura García, Yanira González, Paula Gonzálvez, Ali Haider, Victoria Heredia, Anthony Herrera, Zora Latif, Xiao Liu, David Marchal, Mayori Martínez, Lídia Melero, Antonio Morales, Arnaldo Pacheco, Ana Pérez, Eber Ramos, Faraj Sahboun, Jordi Urbina, Rukhma Wlalayat and Hao Zheng. 

Accompanied by teachers Diana Ros and Damiana Moreno.

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Participants:

Maikol Yordan Aguilar, Olga Aguilera, Lluís Ángel Álvares, Gabriel Amaya, Mounir Bouaouda, Franchesca Curiel, Bilal El Baouti, Ingrid Ferrer, Lucía Galera, Sandra García, Natalia López, Muhammad Asad, David Martínez, Gabriel Norte, Víctor Patón, Óscar Regalado, Jesús Robles, Erika Román and Alexis Solórzano.

Accompanied by the teachers Irene Lop, Damiana Moreno, José Ángel Prieto and the filmmaker Maider Fernández Iriarte.

The boys and girls of IES Barres i Ones at the installation of “Going upstairs, word by word”. “Cartographies of emotion”.

In the following legend you will find the relationship between each colour and its emotion:

Click on the different boxes and find out what story and emotion is behind each one.

YOLANDA VICTORIA CHÁVEZ TUESTA

Year of birth: 1965
Years lived in the country of origin: 26

“...Anant a un altre país no saps el que t’espera, però, s’ha de fer”

Any d'arribada: 1991
Motiu migratori: econòmics i per seguretat

“En aquell moment, no penses com serà l’arribada, solament t’entra la nostàlgia”

Antonia

Any de naixement: 1945
Anys viscuts a la seva terra d’origen: 7

“el meu pare es va quedar sense feina. era la posguerra y no hi havia feina però sí molta necessitat”

Any d'arribada: 1952
Motiu migratori: econòmic

“Arribats a Barcelona, sense casa ni feina i nens petits, la meva mare sí que va tenir dificultats”

Elena Cabeza

Any de naixement: 1969
Anys viscuts a la seva terra d’origen: 28

“els costums no són massa diferents, però sí que segueixo fent algunes receptes”

Any d'arribada: 1991
Motiu migratori: per amor i per feina

“la meva infància va ser feliç. anava a una escola petita i jugavem al camp”

Hafida Laamim

Any de naixement: 1974
Anys viscuts a la seva terra d’origen: 26

“Només vull que les meves filles tinguin una bona educació”

Any d'arribada: 2000
Motiu migratori: per millorar la vida

“recordo el mar i les amigues, com passejavem per la sorra i el mar s'enduia les nostres sandàlies”

Ibrahim Zarrougui

Any de naixement: 1979
Anys viscuts a la seva terra d’origen: 24

“Volia una vida millor i viure bé, més endavant amb un bon futur”

Any d'arribada: 2003
Motiu migratori: voluntari

“Em vaig sentir avorrit, molt perdut i sol la primera vegada en tocar aquesta terra”

MARIA DOLORES MARZO

Any de naixement: 1990
Anys viscuts a la seva terra d’origen: 27

“...vaig trobar a gent molt amable i no em va costar acostumar-me”

Any d'arribada: 2017
Motiu migratori: per feina

“La diferència és que allà vivia amb la meva família, i aquí no”

Eliane Rodrigues Kramer

Any de naixement: 1979
Anys viscuts a la seva terra d’origen: 32

“És sortir, donar la cara i no tenir mandra”

Any d'arribada: 2011
Motiu migratori: millorar la situació dels seus fills

“Tot i que Barcelona és la meva llar, Brasil sempre serà la meva terra"

Maryan Taidi

Any de naixement: 1983
Anys viscuts a la seva terra d’origen: 18

“Soc una persona molt oberta, simpática i no em va costar gens adaptar-me”

Any d'arribada: 2002
Motiu migratori: millorar en general

“Tots tenim dret a canviar, tenir un futur millor”

Carlos Ponce

Any de naixement: 1978
Anys viscuts a la seva terra d’origen: 21

“És molt trist saber que quan arribaràs estaràs sol, però a la vegada et fa més fort”

Any d'arribada: 2011
Motiu migratori: per amor i per cercar noves oportunitats

“L'alegria de que et deixin passar. un immigrant sempre està pensant en això"

Manuela Díaz Sieiro

Any de naixement: 1943
Anys viscuts a la seva terra d’origen: 14

“”...soc de Galicia, provincia d'Ourense”

Any d'arribada: 1960
Motiu migratori: millorar la vida

“...m'agrada molt la gent de Catalunya”

Montse López

Any de naixement: 1982
Anys viscuts a la seva terra d’origen: 7

“molta alegria al recordar la infància i tot el recorregur que he fet fins aquí”

Any d'arribada: 1989
Motiu migratori: la família volia millorar

“...no és fàcil, però estic fent molt d'esforç per aprendre la llengua"

Carlos Contrera

Any de naixement: 1979
Anys viscuts a la seva terra d’origen: 11

“”Hi ha molts sentiments retrobats, un vol estar al seu país d'origen, però ara no es pot”

Any d'arribada: 2007
Motiu migratori: per seguretat

“ara agraeixo estar aquí, que és on he format la meva família”

Eduardo Gallego Mora

Any de naixement: 1976
Anys viscuts a la seva terra d’origen: 38

“Tot el que m’ha passat ha sigut allí”

Any d'arribada: 2014
Motiu migratori: per feina

“Vaig venir pel meu propi compte i va ser una aventura"

Isaac Bascope

Any de naixement: 1982
Anys viscuts a la seva terra d’origen: 20

“és una de les joguines de quan era petit. estaven de moda i hi havia de molts tipus"

Any d'arribada: 2007
Motiu migratori: fugir de la pobresa

“al principi va ser molt dolorós i em vaig haver d'esforçar molt, però ha merescut la pena”

Participants:

Els i les alumnes de 3r d’ESO de la promoció 2019-2020 de l’IES Barres i Ones de Badalona acompanyats pels docents del centre. 

The boys of Kirikú-EduVic at the installation “From Africa, we discover Barcelona”.

With their gaze, recently arrived in the city, and photography as a graphic testimony, these young people help us discover Barcelona from different perspectives (Bogatell beach, Montjuïc from the formal purity of the Miró Foundation, the Carmel batteries…). Images that link up again with the work of Piero Sacchetto: sea, sky, sand, ochre and blue….

Below you can see the current set-up of From Africa, we discover Barcelona.

Participants:

When we reopened the museum in May, the works remained silent and the tour of the rooms — now with masks and hydroalcoholic gel – gave us a different perspective of the whole exhibition. We missed the works, the projects, and we appreciate them in a different way. We look at the details and remember the days of exchanges and hugs. With this sentiment in the back of our minds, we wrote to Piero about our impressions, and he replied with another letter.

Visit to the exhibition Solo Andata (Només d’anada), by Piero Sacchetto.

Imma Boj (Director of the MhiC)

6 May 2020:

On 6 May we returned to the MhiC after more than 50 days in confinement. The situation caused by the pandemic does not yet allow us to return to normality and, therefore, this is a brief visit to the museum to collect some documents and review the space.

The museum is closed and silent and the exhibition hall, with the work of Piero Sacchetto, takes on a different look. We have not opened the spotlights or the windows. The light, from this midday sun in springtime, slips into the space through the Mallorcan blinds and the skylights in the ceiling, creating a domestic effect as if it were the warm and cosy living room at home… at home again…

I make a general tour, remembering Piero’s story, as if rereading a familiar, beloved and wise book.

I look for the detail, that which in previous readings I neither saw nor felt, but I know that it is present in each work, in each brushstroke and texture…

Dear Imma, dear MhiC

Your heartfelt account of your solitary visit to the exhibition of my paintings was really moving. It was as if, with your steps, the movement returned to the exhibition hall, to your delicate hands when you welcomed my painted spaces and, as hosts, you looked for the most suitable place for each of the canvases. Your footsteps have also brought me back to that particular opening day with so many people, of all ages, so full of life. Your words bring me back to the thick sound of voices that from the ground floor reached the paintings hanging upstairs. Hugs, gestures of encounter, small movements and moments of stillness with our eyes on the colours of the paintings. Some spoke of the colours of the sand, others of bright blue, others of lives, of bets, of destinies?

Only one way: towards that empty space that envelops everything without making any distinction or towards that light mixed with water and blue?

Today the room is empty and silent as it was yesterday and the day before. The stories rest, even if they don’t have an end, but let’s not lose sight and let’s not leave the empty and silent space of a place born to talk for a long time!

Pieve di Cento. Bologna. 7 May 2020.

It is obvious, then, that the production of the exhibition before and after the confinement has been very different. Without travel and without being able to share space directly with the works and with the people who are part of this process, but they have arrived at the second port of this journey: The Museum of Rural Life.

In the following emails, small fragments of intimacy between Lali Bosch and Piero Sacchetto, you will discover the change of perspective on the exhibition as seen by its creators, from its conception at the MhiC to its current location at the Museu de la Vida Rural.

Because of the measures against the pandemic, the visits have changed, as have the openings, but the works, pure and perennial, continue to convey their message.

Mails between Lali Bosch and Piero Sacchetto before the opening of “One Way Ticket” at the Museu de la Vida Rural. . 

Exhibition opening day on September 18 al the Museu de la Vida Rural. 

Impressions between Lali and Piero the morning after the opening of at the Museu de la Vida Rural.

In May we reopened, and shortly afterwards – at the end of June – we returned the works to their boxes to embark on a new journey. Of the six months that the exhibition was supposed to be open to the public at the MhiC, we were only able to have it for three months and little more… If it is true that the situation was very extraordinary, we were left with the aftertaste of having done precious and very valuable work that we hadn’t the opportunity to share and communicate as it deserved.

Non title. From the series “Solo Andata” (2017)

The current exhibition “Making of One Way Ticket” at the MhiC. 

The current installations of “Going upstairs, word by word” and “Sea Ways” at  Making of One Way Ticket. 

You will also find, when entering the exhibition hall, on your left, the photographic montage of the project From Africa, we discover Barcelona, made by the children of the CRAE Kirikú, as well as the making of how they developed the workshop between the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020.

The current installation of “From Africa, we discover Barcelona” as part of the exhibition “Making of One Way Ticket” at the MhiC. 

As for Cartographies of Emotion, the project has matured and acquired new dimensions, becoming a fully-fledged exhibition project with a more definitive montage that will allow it to embark on a journey of knowledge throughout the territory, just as the works of Piero Sacchetto have done.

The current installation of “Cartographies of Emotion” is made of wood. 

THE 2020-2021 EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMME

As we did with Sólo de ida, the current exhibition also shares space with new educational projects conceived in a migratory key.

Let's move forward dancing. Baggages

If last year we developed this objective through the photographic gaze, this year we are doing it with the exploration of the body through dance. A new group of young migrants worked for six weeks with the choreographers Pere Faura and Jumon Erra, and the documentary filmmaker Maria Chatzi, who recorded the whole process. The result is the audiovisual piece One Way Ticket. Baggages.

Creation and body expression sessions with Pere faura and Jumon Erra. 

During this time the group has danced, exchanged thoughts, photographed and participated in the recording of images. The main theme has been “the party” and the memory that this implies in the dances, meals and interactions typical of each of the children’s countries of origin.

Inside the suitcase. One way only.

When we start a journey, the suitcase is a link between what we leave behind and what we will find at the end of the road. A container of objects that make the journey and the arrival easier, of clothes that cover us, of memories that we carry from one place to another in the hope of not feeling lonely once we arrive at our destination. The suitcase is the house, the weight of the things we believe to be ours, the selection of objects we want to keep close to us, that bind us in one way or another and make our journey lighter.

To create Inside the suitcase. One Way Ticket, a project included in the “Migracions” cycle – as Cartographies of Emotion – the pupils began by working, among other aspects, on the different migrations throughout our history, the differences between migrant and refugee, the causes and reasons for migration.

The starting point was their immediate environment, for which they began by carrying out research activities, such as their family tree, geolocation and an interview with a person in the student’s environment who has experienced a migration process. The key question in this interview was “If you had to repeat the journey now, what would you put in your suitcase? The answers were very varied. Some were more focused on the symbolic and sentimental (family, memories…) and others spoke of reasons for leaving (economic, lack of security…).

Once these aspects had been explored, and taking into account the works of different artists, the themes that emerged from the research were represented through objects, images, drawings or interventions based on the main object: the suitcase. This exercise has helped the students to rethink their ideas about artistic language and migration, and to become more aware of the diversity of their context.

The MhiC presents a selection of the artistic suitcases that the students have prepared, accompanied by an infographic that explains the meaning of the work and the development of the theme they have worked on.

And in parallel, as in each edition of the “Migrations” project, the students of the computer science cycle are working on a website where they can see all the interviews that have been carried out and the artistic suitcases exhibited in the museum.

Boys and girls from 3rds ESO from IES Barres i Ones preparing materials for tha installation at class.  

The itinerant and therefore transformative nature of each of the projects presented generates an inertia. At each step, we initiate new dialogues and interactions, new looks and movements.

The confinement led us to rethink the exhibition, but also how we communicate and the concepts of distance and affection. So, we started a participatory project that continues to nourish the MhiC from different geographical points. A virtual exhibition under the name of Correspondències de confinament, which brings together different stories of those extraordinary days.

With recipes, photographs, thoughts… we thus made visible a heritage that, thanks to the virtual world, we could share with everyone and create together.

You can participate by sending your story to  mhic@sant-adria.net 

Below you will find some interesting documents and links to the projects we have presented and their participants.

• Guia d'acompanyament de l'exposició
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  Curator's dossier, Eulàlia Bosch.
  
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  Exhibition at the Museu de la Vida Rural – Fundació Carulla de l’Espluga de Francolí
  
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  Sea Ways project's blog
  
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  CUBIC STORIES (2018) - IES Barres i Ones students' project
  
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  LANDSCAPES AT TABLE (2019) - IES Barres i Ones students' project
  
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  A Bao A Qu association. From Africa, we discover Barcelona blog
  
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  A Bao A Qu association. From Africa, we discover Barcelona photo project
  
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  Pere Faura. Coreograpger
  
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  Maria Chatzy. Director
  
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  Gedi Cooperativa. Producer of the documentary