Toledo

So awhile ago, I took a quick day trip to Toledo with a couple of my favorite ladies. Only about an hour train ride out of Madrid, it reminded me a lot of Segovia. Although mostly known for its famous cathedral (I didn't bother putting up any pictures as mine were awful) we were also lucky enough to see the AMAZING Ana Alcaide performing in the street. She plays a viola de teclas and many traditional sephardic songs.

We ended up enjoying a relaxing day and mostly walked around the city (most of the sites/museums we wanted to see were closed as it was a Sunday) and I visited my first Synagogue. Overall, a pretty, quaint Spanish city that was great to spend a day in, but definitely not somewhere I would want to live for an entire year.


Current Musik: Ana Alcaide "Como La Luna y El Sol"

CaixaForum - Infancia

A little while ago (Ok, a month) the MinoriTeam decided to take a quick dip in something cultural and ventured off to the CaixaForum (a free, contemporary, art museum owned by a Spanish bank). There were two exhibits running, Dalí/Lorca and Infancia, photos by Isabel Muñoz.

So the basic premise of her exhibit was to take high-quality (ignore my blurred, photographer's too ignorant to work the flash on her camera, picture), close up shots of various children from all around the world, blow them up and smush them in a room walled in mirrors. Oh, and of course paste their stories of being orphaned by AIDS, impoverished or sexually assaulted on small plaques on the sides of the photos. Hmmmm.

Now don't get me wrong. These were gorgeous pictures. But I can't say that I'm ecstatic over the idea of thousands of citizens from the Global North adding another set of images to the "Developing World" section of their philanthropic sympathies. I hate always questioning the line between solidarity from those with privilege to the blatant othering of entire peoples, but REALLY?

In some of the pictures, the children (especially young boys who had been assaulted) covered their faces to hide their identities. And as much as I want to give the photographer the benefit of the doubt that she obtained willing consent and acknowledge how powerful and image like that can be, if the boy doesn't want his face shown then I'm wondering how he'd feel about the picture being blown up to 6 feet...

I don't know... After shit like this goes down I feel like I have to seriously reevaluate every exotic piece of propaganda some westerner elicits from the east.



Current Musik: Rihanna "What's My Name"
(anyone else catch the irony that of all the 3,000 some songs on my computer Rihanna pops up while I'm writing about the exotification of children of color through art/popular culture? damnit for being such a dang catchy song)