Yoseba MP

Joseba Muruzábal, better known as Yoseba MP, began exploring the world of urban art at just 14 years old. He earned a degree in Fine Arts and currently works as a professional artist. His work is characterized by a realistic style through which he depicts everyday scenes, often blending reality with science fiction. Yoseba’s artistic language shows a clear influence of photography and comic books. In 2009, he won the Novos Valores Award from the Provincial Council of Pontevedra with the painting Juancho y sus Perros. In 2012, he launched the series Fenómenas do Rural, a tribute to and testimony of the vital role played by rural women in Galicia.

As a teenager, you painted graffiti. How did this early connection between creativity and the street influence the development of your artistic career?

Yes, painting in the streets as a kid somehow made it easier for me to earn money decorating commercial spaces during and after my Fine Arts studies. In turn, that technical experience prepared me for what came shortly afterward: painting buildings with my own themes and ideas.

You studied Fine Arts in Galicia. How did that education influence the evolution of your technique and realistic style?

I studied in Pontevedra, at a faculty with a strong conceptual focus. I learned to paint by spending countless hours in the studio. Luckily, I had a classmate, David Loureiro, who was a true virtuoso with a paintbrush in that environment. He became my private painting teacher and flatmate during those years.

I learned a great deal at that faculty. Most importantly, I learned how to develop ideas. I wouldn’t be painting what I paint today if I hadn’t gone through that experience.

In Galicia, you are known for painting “Supergrandmothers” (grandmothers with superpowers) on the facades of towns and villages. How did this project begin?

This series developed through a very gradual transition. For years, I had been working on a series called My Friends and Their Dogs, but eventually that theme naturally ran its course. I then painted several roadside landscapes, and in some of them a Supergrandmother wearing an apron would appear. Roadside shoulders are transitional spaces where you often come across women like them.

After painting a Yoda levitating French fries for a mobile burger stand, I was invited to participate in an exhibition focused on traditional stew ingredients. I painted a woman peeling a potato in mid-air and immediately saw a Jedi. Traditionally, that figure might have been associated with a meiga (Galician witch), but in my mind—already occupied with images of aprons appearing in paintings—it felt like something much more contemporary and, metaphorically, more real. That was the seed of the project.

The concept of Fenómenas do Rural matured as I met more and more models. I now have a theory that may or may not be true, but it serves as the conceptual foundation of the series. I developed it after visiting many homes in rural Galicia over the last seven years. In short, these are my conclusions.

Smallholding rural women, such as those in Galicia, live alongside physical agricultural labor from childhood through old age. In large-scale farming systems, where the land is not owned by those who work it, physical labor often disappears after retirement age. Statistically—and from my own experience—I observed that most women over seventy are either widowed or in better health than their partners. As a result, in Galicia, and probably elsewhere in the world, women significantly outnumber men at older ages.

Galician rural women, like rural women in many other communities, share a number of life experiences. High rates of male emigration, involvement in farm work from a very young age, and even the dispersed settlement pattern of Galicia all contribute to this. You never quite know where one village ends and another begins; the landscape is a continuous stretch of houses and vegetable gardens. This both connects and separates people. Social interaction among rural women often takes place in gardens or along roadsides, whereas men traditionally socialize in bars. (Of course, I’m generalizing.)

Then there’s the apron. Until the 1980s, work aprons throughout Spain shared a very similar appearance. In rural areas, women of a certain age tended to wear practical clothing with little color and often checkered patterns. Today, in Galicia, aprons still follow specific checkered designs that vary according to color combinations and cuts. They all seem to belong to the same team. Work clothes become everyday clothing because these women are always doing something.

Because of all this, I conclude that these smallholding women develop a physical strength and work endurance that is not diminished by age due to the context in which they live. That strength is real, and my intention is to bear witness to it by exaggerating it and treating it with humor, drawing on the collective imagery of science fiction that we all understand, in order to create a new Galician mythology.

The reality of these women is sweet because of who they are, and bitter because of everything they gave up for the sake of their families. Fortunately for all of us, it bears little resemblance to the way we understand life today.

Each Supergrandmother mural tells a real story from the rural lives of these women, with a humorous twist. How do you think this heroic gesture of complicity contributes to the recognition of rural labor in Galicia?

My murals didn’t give these women any power, but they may slightly change the way we perceive them. Whenever I visited schools to talk about my work, children understood it immediately. They could instantly recognize their own grandmothers in the paintings.

Then I would ask them about the toughest or most demanding things their grandmothers do, and they would have a great time answering. Human beings rarely see as extraordinary what they encounter every day, yet there are thousands of women in aprons who, at eighty years old, still tend vegetable gardens, prune apple trees, and chop firewood. The sheer number of these extraordinary women is precisely what makes their importance seem ordinary.

This project involves extensive work with the grandmothers beforehand. How do you get to know their stories?

Usually through their grandchildren. Lately, since I’ve already painted the grandmothers of most of my friends, I post announcements on Facebook to find new models.

Once a woman understands what I do, I meet with her several times. In the beginning, I would visit once and get everything I needed. Nowadays, I spend one or two days chatting and sharing snacks with them before doing the photo session, already knowing which pose and props I’ll need. It’s a lot of fun. In many cases, the grandchildren’s hands are hidden behind them, acting as support so that no accidents happen.

At the beginning of your career, you mainly produced studio work, but now you are more focused on urban art. Do you think urban art offers a more direct connection with people and the environment? Is the opportunity to exchange stories through art an added value for you?

Urban art gives me visibility and income. Murals are valued according to their difficulty and size, making it easier to establish a fee structure. However, they are also ephemeral.

Of course, I still paint in the studio. Otherwise, I’d spend half the year watching TV series—which I do anyway; there’s time for everything. Paintings will remain as the physical testimony of this series. In a few decades, photographs may be all that remain of the murals.

At the end of 2019, you created the mural One Castle, Many Languages and 12 Square Kilometres in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona), something very different from the Supergrandmothers project. What was it like stepping outside your comfort zone to create something new? Is it important for you to continue developing other lines of work?

I had a fantastic time painting the Castellers mural. I first started painting toy figures in 2016, and my first mural featuring them was on a garage door in Salamanca. I was eager to bring that theme into a major project, and L’Hospitalet gave me the opportunity.

Yes, it’s very important for me to do different things. I love the Fenómenas do Rural series because of everything it gives me on a personal level, but if I don’t want to become bored with it, I need to work on other projects that motivate and entertain me.

For me, the idea behind a work is more important than the painting itself. Not when it comes to other artists’ work—my tastes are very broad, and there are purely formal works that absolutely amaze me. I’m talking about my own practice and what I need in order to keep painting without feeling empty.

The mural was very well received by local residents. People of all generations identified with different characters in the human tower and commented on them. How did you connect comic-book and cartoon culture with the history and context of this territory?

As I mentioned before, I already had the toy-figure series in mind. After learning about the city’s history and the importance of its diversity coexisting within a strongly Catalan cultural identity, I came up with the idea of blending everything together and framing it with a title that would better define and explain the work.

I’ll simply reproduce the text that accompanied the mural’s publication:

One Castle, Many Languages and Twelve Square Kilometres. L’Hospitalet is Diversity.

With this title, I wanted to give meaning to this tower of toy characters—each from a different universe, all working together and seeking balance in order to crown E.T. at the top.

The reality is that L’Hospitalet is a city with a very large population concentrated within a small area. It has always been a refuge for migrants from other parts of Spain, and today it is also home to people from all over the world. The Collblanc school, located very close to the mural, has only about 20% of students whose parents were born in Catalonia.

This human tower—an emblem and example of Catalan (and Valencian) skill and tradition—is constantly being built by the people who come to this land in search of a future.

In fact, before creating the mural, you built a real human tower using your own toy figures, didn’t you? Do you collect them?

Yes, I did build a human tower, and finding the right balance and composition took me two days. It kept falling apart, and I was determined to make it behave like a real castell. In the end, I had to resort to Blu Tack.

L’Hospitalet de Llobregat is an example of a city that actively supports muralism. Why do you think there are more and more urban art projects today? Would you say there has been a positive change in recent years regarding this discipline?

Oof, I’m probably going to get myself into trouble here.

Most of the time, muralism is a relatively inexpensive intervention compared to the impact of the final result, which is why so many cities have embraced the cause of adding color to public spaces. However, what initially began as a way of cleaning up and beautifying neglected areas is gradually becoming an invasion.

If we want this movement to endure, everyone involved needs to establish limits.

Personally, I don’t think I’m capable of saying “no,” so I just hope nobody ever offers me a white lighthouse to paint.

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