| Impulsadas por el Cabildo de Gran Canaria marcas de diseñadores locales como: Roser Muntané, Nuria González, Abyss, Nualoa, Lenita, Ráppido, Alida Domínguez, Trastornados, Aurelia Gil, Alicia Borrell, María Mía, y Phobos;y nacionales , Andrés Sardá, Guillermina Baeza, TCN y "La Perla". Bar Rafaeli, Eugenia Silva, Isabeli Fontana, María José "Elite Model Look", Ariadne Artiles, Andrés Velencoso, como modelos y otros cuarenta profesionales presentaron la colección de gama alta en exclusiva para España y diseños grancanarios. |
Poco creible esta bienal. Personalmente, pienso que la única cultura sostenible es la del uso pragmático de los recursos naturales. Crear una estructura de tal calado, como esta bienal, donde los propios creadores canarios nos vemos arrinconados una vez más, es un indigno ejemplo más de una manera no sostenible de utilizar los recursos de todos. Todo esto parece estar más dirigido a un lavado de cara de el gobierno que nos representa, en aras de alivianar la carga social que representa tantos años enfocados a una cultura del cemento. No malgastemos conceptos tan dramáticamente necesarios para el planeta como el de sostenibilidad utilizando los viejos tópicos de siempre sobre nuestra geografía, y lo pintoresco, que tantos réditos politicos ha dejado a unos pocos frente a una imperiosa necesidad de muchos. Atilio Doreste, profesor de Pintura de la ULL.
Canary Islands
Canary Islands in the Atlantic... Canary Islands, as it were, which at once separates and unites three continents... Canary Islands placed in the centre of the greatest epic of discovery undertaken by man... As the great Miguel de Unamuno said: «These islands are, over and above everything else, an advance-guard of Europe, of Spain on the way to America, and an advance-guard of America on the way to Europe and África... They are an inn at a great meeting of the ways of the agreat peoples.»
Islands of mystery
But they are also the «islands of mystery». Mystery surrounds their origins —are they the living remains of legendary Atlantis, the vanished continent?—, their first inhabitants and, until not many centuries ago, their geographicaí situation itself, because few archipelagos can be said to have «travelled» so extensively in the course of their long history.
Islands discovered
Islands discovered, rediscovered, lost, found again, located in different places, sometimes increased by the addition of imaginary islands, sometimes diminished by the subtraction of real ones, the Cañarles have always been wrapped in a halo of mystery. They are islands that have always been connected with the idea of the wonderful, of surprise, of magic, of the awe-inspiring, of contrast.
Petrified storm
Miguel de Unamuno said of them that they were «a tremendous upheaval of the entrails of the earth; it all seems like a petrified storm, but a storm of fire, of lava, rather than of water. I found myself remembering a passage from the great Catalán poet Mosén Jacinto Verdaguer's «Canigó» where, describing one of these formations, he tells us of the dreadful shrieks the earth must have let out on giving birth, in its younger years, to one of these mountain ranges; of its days of upheaval, of its nights of groaning, until it brought forth these fiery entrails which, at the kiss of the storm, became fixed as rocks and crags. Here one can imagine what the terrible combat between Vulcan and Neptune, between the God of Fire and the God of Water, must have been like.» And academician Pedro de Lorenzo pointed out that «the Canaries are landscape, a succession of landscape picures, made by man... Splendid, with brilliant greens; the violet, intensely purple, dark flowers... Capable of making the eartg, man has invented its landscapes...»
These islands are two-dimensional.
Contrast. These islands are two-dimensional. They have only a North and a South. A North with a dense banana-tree green whose richness, when the sky overcast, is veiled with a subtle melancholy; a South bristling with euphorbia, whose burning dryness blazes with wounding light.
Here wonder, surprise, magic, awe and contrast have all a common denomin-ator: harmony. There is no jarring element. Everything seems to have its natural and logical place in an overall pattern. For this reason Claude Dervenn has said of these islands that «if it were necessary to sum up 'the geography of colours, scents and sounds' of which André Sigfried spoke, I would say that the islands are gold and emerald, that the wind carries aromas of eucalyptus, resin, orange-blossom and heliotrope, and that the silence of their nights is accompanied by the whisper of their imprisoned waters and the infinite murmur of the Ocean.»
Colour, scent, sound, balanced climate
Colour, scent, sound, balanced climate. If these factors, harmoniously com-bined, make these islands different from other lands, the islanders themselves must also be different from other men. The need, when times are hard, to fend for oneself no matter what the odds, to be self-sufficient, the absolute need to face dangers from outside and, finally, the fao^íhat they are living in a miniature continent, has made them understand the" Mportance of helping each other —though this does not exclude internal disputes—, causes them to be more good-natured —and, in the process, gentle, melancholy and, on occasion, rather too easy-going—, more curious-curious to know what «others» are like —and more hospitable than his fellow-men.
