october-2011

“I knew that area very well,” says
Canogar. “Before, it used to be a huge
freeway bordering on – I could hardly
call it a river – a trickle, the Manzanares.
The M-30 separated these two
neighbourhoods, and I would drive
along and look at the buildings and
think, it must be horrible to live here.
Now, it’s incredible.”
Canogar, a renowned installation
artist who last year hung a dramatic
looping screen from the ceiling of the
EU HQ in Brussels, won a competition
to adorn two pedestrian bridges
spanning the river.
“I wanted to create a piece that
metaphorically bridges the two
neighbourhoods which were separated
by this freeway, and are now joined by
the park,” he explains. So he put out a call
for local volunteers to pose, and selected
15 from the 150 people who came.
“They’ve become sort of celebrities;
there’s one particular woman, Carmen,
who’s 81 years old, and she appears
fl oating on the north bridge with her
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cane. She was born in the neighbourhood
and has seen the tremendous changes
in it; she’s been recognised a lot — I love
that neighbourhoodly pride.”
The canopies of the bridges are
covered with six-and-a-half million tiles
each, which were laboriously mapped
and hand placed over eighteen months
to complete the stunning mosaics. “It
took a lot of time and research, and
a lot of meetings,” says Canogar.
Much of his work to date has dealt
with ideas of waste and reclamation,
through arresting sculptures made from
techno-detritus, so there was immediate
appeal for Canogar in the renewal of this
immense eyesore of a freeway.
“The project is about bringing back
to life the area — which is a very
important place historically. There
are so many paintings that Goya did
in the area, of people frolicking on the
river – they’re in the Prado [Museum]
– and it’s interesting to see how it
was used, and then what it became
with the urban sprawl, and now to see