Y la tierra será el paraíso: Domènec
Y la tierra será el paraíso, title of this solo show, is a verse of the most popular L'Internationale Spanish version, the working class anthem, adopted by most of socialist, communist and anarchist political groups worldwide.
The phrasing perfectly sums up the utopian character of modernity, an era in which the society believed that all good things were at hand and everything could be achieved through effort. Domènec invests that statement in order to throw an ironic smile verifying the naivity of those who uncritically entrusted the promises of modernity now that we have seen the disastrous outcome.
Domènec's work seems to reveal the hidden face of Modern architecture, whose results were contrary to the objectives that were promulgated. If modernity, with its characteristic tendency to formulate promises of progress, of a better tomorrow for all, projecting through architecture a universal model of welfare for the working class, these images show the clash of those ideals with reality: neighbourhoods where the poorest social classes are forced to live in precarious conditions, segregated from social, cultural and economic centres. Working class, immigrants coming largely from the former colonies, and gypsy groups, are no longer treated as individuals from the moment they joined a kind of hive-building, becoming a mass, in otherness, feared and ignored by the rest of population with better working and economic conditions.
