SFERA International participated in the project WALLS OF CULTURE and implemented it together with Association ARTE.M, which was the project coordinator, and EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION WORLD-OUR HOME from Latvia, ASSOCIACIO CORRALITO CENTRE DE CREACIO ARTISTICA from Spain, Connected for Future from Bulgaria and Partaking from Italy.

The YE took place in Funchal, Madeira, from November 30 to December 8, 2021.

Here is the description of this experience in the words of the participants:

Young artists from different countries, such as Bulgaria, Latvia, Italy, North Macedonia, and Spain, participated in this project. The relevance of this project is based on sharing the differences that make us up through knowledge about the specific artistic fields of photography, audiovisuals, and muralism. Using these techniques, a dialogue is established between the different artists and the differences that exist in their cultures.

The exhibition is a sample of the results we have reached during this process, a photographic exhibition in which we can find portraits of the inhabitants of the island of Madeira and the people who come to visit the island. Through the discourse created with the portrait, we can observe the differences that make us rich and thus celebrate our differences.

In the sample, we will also find an audiovisual documentary that tries to celebrate cultural diversity, a sample of the cultural differences that exist in our society through interviews, and the importance of these. Launching a claim in favor of cultural diversity and against its unification. We are all people, but we do not all have the same origin or the same culture; differences make us who we are and at the same time make us part of something. The celebration of the construction of society through different cultural identities through interdependence.

The mural generated by the artists has been created through a participatory process in which all people have been able to share representative images of their cultures. From these, a piece was made where we can see the symbols that represent us in our own cultures. These symbols, depending on the culture, transform their content and their meaning, but in their form, they are the same. We all feel represented by the nature of our country, our ceramics, or the forms that our crafts acquire.

Perhaps the question is: Are the differences ours that make us common? What is obvious is that wealth is found in diversity, not in the unification of cultures.

Written by Albert Garcia Baltanas