Dóna la Cara per la Ciutat – L’Hospitalet — a street-art portrait campaign

The Centre Cultural la Bòbila and the Rebobinart association have launched an urban art project in the Pubilla Cases neighbourhood. “Dóna la cara per la ciutat” (“Show your face for the city”) is an initiative born out of a wish to involve and represent the neighbourhood’s residents, as well as its shopkeepers. Urban artists are painting portraits of local faces using street-art techniques on the shutters of the Can Vidalet market in Pubilla Cases.

Approach: At Rebobinart we understand art as a way of transforming reality. That’s why we plan every intervention so that it goes beyond mere artistic expression and generates positive externalities for the communities where it takes place. On top of that, the active participation of the people the artwork is aimed at — supporting the artists themselves as they create and carry out the piece — is also vital, so that those people make the work their own and feel it belongs to them. It also sets in motion processes within the community, improving channels of dialogue between its members and encouraging greater social cohesion.

For these reasons, Rebobinart always brings in some element to help foster this community participation. In large-scale interventions, we also always aim for an overall coherence coming from a shared theme, pictorial genre or colour palette. We understand that this way the intervention gains more strength, becomes more recognisable and produces less clashing visual impact. The action aims to bring life to a shopping street in each neighbourhood through urban art, using this artistic tool to involve residents in the life of the neighbourhood. It consists of painting 6 shutters with different artists on a shopping street in each neighbourhood. The shutters will feature portraits of two people’s faces and 4 pieces by independent artists, plus a workshop for young people. To get local residents involved, two lines of action were set up. A total of 7 artists and 53 shutters.

First, the faces that the artists will draw belong to residents of the neighbourhood itself. Under the message “Dóna la cara pel barri” (“Show your face for the neighbourhood”), a photo booth was set up where anyone willing could be photographed to become part of the artistic intervention in their own neighbourhood. This generates interest in the artistic intervention among the residents photographed, as they wait to see whether their face will end up being one of those featured at the market. It also sends a message of fellowship and neighbourhood spirit in difficult times, a reminder that a neighbourhood is made up of people with faces and eyes, with feelings and hopes, and that no one should be left behind. On the other hand, the artists chosen for the independent pieces were, naturally, chosen to be compatible and complementary with one another, to keep the coherence of the visual message the project wants to convey.