COCHE ANTIGUO

During 2003 I was living in Guadalajara, in a rented room where I shared a kitchen, bathroom and common spaces with other kids. It was never more than a bedroom. I spent practically all my time at work or directly in Madrid. In Madrid he frequented a circle of contingent friendships, which were far from being convenient friendships. However, there was a level of reciprocal appreciation and sympathy. One of my friends had a birthday coming up. I thought I would give her something personal. A drawing would be a good idea. That is how I developed this sketch.

My situation as a migrant was constantly on my mind. My family's home was far away, their homesickness was near. How to bring home wherever I travelled?.... Weekend visits to my friends' houses nourished me with a new hospitality, or at the very least, a homely atmosphere.

I would drop in on Fridays and drop out on Sunday. It was like a parachute boarding. Between trips I would spend a night and a breakfast there. The encounter between the journey and the home, the car and the house, is a collision that seeks an integration or a rejection. Still unresolved, and again we are faced with an event.

The mechanics is a double analogy, which on the one hand articulates the transitions of each of the parts of the vehicle, like an organism and its multi-functions suitably assembled. This complex relationship between its parts is what provides the magic and the technological miracle of mechanics, and that is what mechanics takes care of. If one of them is not right, the vehicle will give problems, and ultimately the vehicle will not achieve its ultimate end or purpose, which is movement and displacement..

Mechanics is also a metaphor for the health of a social group, its consistency and the quality of its interactions, just as its members develop fluid, solid, stable and well-oiled relationships, other groups have relationships that creak, grind and their gears get stuck.

The vehicle is vintage, and an old model car, because it did not look or feel to me like I was travelling in a modern or contemporary vehicle, nor did I experience on a social level any kind of avant-garde or elite. It did not correspond to my perception at all. On the contrary, I felt that my journey, although beautiful and fun, was honestly in a beat-up junker, or at the very least, a classic and obsolete model. It was not a winning car. I couldn't expect much more from it, that it would simply get me to my destination. Again, uncertainty and ephemerality prevailed. And it is these cars that present a high risk of failure or breakdown.