Barcelona,
This year four have been completed since Fundación Mapfre began the project KBR Flame with the purpose of supporting the talent of those who begin to devote themselves professionally to photography after having finished their academic training; EASD-SERRA I ABELLA, ELISAVA. Faculty of Design and Engineering of Barcelona, IDEP Barcelona and IEFC are the Catalan educational institutions that collaborate with this proposal.
In its latest edition, Irina Cervelló works have been selected (Martorell, 2001), April Coudougnan (Perpiñán, 1999), Bernat Erra (Barcelona, 2003) and Patrick Martin (Stockport, England, 1996), chosen by a jury composed of Javier Martín, Arianna Rinaldo and María Santoyo.
Although their languages are diverse (from analog and digital photography to the rereading of personal and public archives) share some basic interests: a critical approach to the construction of memory, whether intimate, collective or territorial. These young artists have analyzed how photography can become an inquiry tool in interpersonal ties, in the effects of the industry in the territory, and in the role that images play in the configuration of identities and historical narratives.
The tour of the exhibition that brings together its creations, in KBR Mapfre Foundation, begins with Opaquework where Irina Cervelló examines the impact of the Solvay petrochemical complex in her hometown, Martorell, from a cultural, environmental and economic perspective.
This project started with a prolonged investigation that combined the images made by the author with historical documents and archival materials. That company, Solvay, acquired in the early seventies a land of thirty hectares in the Polygon La Torre, opened by the authorities in 1972; That political-business alliance favored the consolidation of the factory, which has modified the urban and media environment of that town, while causing long-term environmental effects in its surroundings.
The images of Cervelló document, in a systematic way, the alert sirens belonging to the exterior emergence of the Chemical Sector of Catalonia (PLASEQCAT), and are completed with a chronology of the key events that have linked to Solvay with the historical, political and territorial evolution of Martorell.
In Tous Les Maux Moves Sont InventésApril Co -Educated submerges the public in its personal photographic archive, formed by numerous images taken over six years.
She has not adopted a defined chronology or narrative, but has generated a constellation of sensations, associations and tensions that are linked to their intimate experiences. The photos of this French author freely dialogue with each other, regardless of time and the space in which they were taken, provoking connections through the look and perspective.
Coudougnan is interested in dualities between nature and city, calm and hurry, and its relationship with the search for emotional balance and vital sense. It also proposes a particular response to today’s visual saturation: the incessant flow of images on social networks permeates the project, marked by the desire for reflection from the pause.
The combination of analog and digital photography provides textures, records and TEMPOS different, and enriches the visual story: these scenes not only documented moments, but also outline the intangible, memory and fleeting.
As to For George lookingby Patrick Martin, arises from the study of myths that make up collective memory. It has been fixed, above all, in San Jorge, Roman soldier martyred for not giving up his Christian and represented faith, in the seventh century and in a church in Cappadocia, as a horse figure killing snakes. We had to wait for the Crusades so that his story arrives in the West and the Saint would take the image for which we recognize it today: as a gentleman with a Red Cross, ending with a dragon.
This proposal is based on an investigation on how this myth has been recorded in the collective cultural memory in Catalonia, from its remote origins to Montblanc. Through photographs of people, celebrations and architectures, the series articulates a visual maze of stories and symbols impregnated with history, with the substrate of the first testimonies. This English author proofs how collective cultural memory is not dead, but is comparable to “a playground modeling by nostalgia and amnesia” and comes to twist to favor national consciences.
Close the exhibition Errata faithwork in which Bernat Erra continues that same line of research exploring the construction of a collective identity from the religious imaginary linked to Catholicism.
Remembering his childhood overwhelming before the imagery of faith, he has dedicated this series to that symbolic universe, which combines tradition, mystery and certain fatalism and that he joined the daily iconographies. More than documenting, the photos of ERRA reveal fragments, textures and atmospheres that refer to that cultural heritage, to images that can disturb when we contemplate them stripped of context, a notion that interests the award -winning a lot.
KBR Flame’25
KBR Mapfre Foundation
Avenida del Litoral, 30
Barcelona
From September 24, 2025 to February 1, 2026
