A house that had to be more than convincing: it had to be alive.
The exhibition covered a hundred years of the history of Castilla-La Mancha across three spaces, and toured Ciudad Real, Albacete and Toledo. The first, "Memories of a Life", told the twentieth century — from its opening years to Spain's transition to democracy — in the voice of an elderly woman. Visitors stepped into a space evoking what for anyone might be their grandmother's house, documented and recreated from the rural architecture of La Mancha. A voice began to tell her story and, all at once, the house came alive: the gauze separating the audience from the innermost room turned transparent and, as the words unfolded, the space shifted from one atmosphere to another — winter, summer, the war, the village festival. In a far corner, a panel of what seemed to be whitewashed wall opened and, through an arrangement of mirrors, revealed the house of the village landowner where the protagonist had worked as a maid. Through the kitchen window came the fireworks of the summer festival. As the narration turned to hardship in the fields, to the grandchildren who had left, to the arrival of democracy, elements that seemed to be one thing became another: the wooden door at the back became a screen carrying images and documents of the period; a wall became a doorway into another space. With nothing but voice, light and projection, the house revealed its soul and the story of any woman of La Mancha — one who might have been the mother or the grandmother of anyone in the room.
Concept and design of the audiovisual space "Recuerdos de una vida": Ignasi Cristià. Production: GPD General de Producciones y Diseño. Realisation: Konic Audiovisuals. Photographs: Pep Botey.
