23OV_Olor de Málaga-16

Cristina Agàpito
Director-Conservator
colección olorVISUAL
‘But when from a long-distant past nothing
subsists, after the people are dead, after
the things are broken and scattered,
taste and smell alone, more fragile but
more enduring, more unsubstantial, more
persistent, more faithful, remain poised a
long time, like souls, remembering, waiting,
hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest;
and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and
almost impalpable drop of their essence,
the vast structure of recollection.’
[Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time]
The quote from Marcel Proust is an excellent
introduction to explaining the
origin and essence of this project, created
especially for the Municipal Museum
in Málaga as the latest in the series that
started at the Museu de Cadaqués (Girona)
in 2013 and continued at the Museu
d’Art in Cerdanyola (Barcelona) in 2014.
The exhibition project Smell of Málaga
has been conceived and created on the
basis of the city itself and its historical
places and events, through the olfactory
memories that these have left us and
the classification of these memories by
means of olfactory notes – the primary
alphabet of the creators of essences
– and the interpretation of the whole
with works from colección olorVISUAL.
Málaga has a long history. Founded
by the Phoenicians in the 8th century
BCE, it is one of the oldest cities in Europe.
To run through its history in broad
outline, we might say that the city was
part of the Roman Empire, was a prosperous
medina in Moorish Al-Andalus
– and a capital city for a time – and was
incorporated into the kingdom of Castile
in 1487. In the nineteenth century
it achieved prominence thanks to its industrial
activity.
There are several mottos and titles that
define it for its historical facts: The first
in the danger of Liberty, the most Noble,
most Loyal, most Hospitable, most Charitable
and always Brave City of Málaga.
It has been popularly referred to as la
bella, ‘the beautiful’, and is known by
the nickname of la bombonera, ‘the box
of sweets’, on account of its topography
and situation, ringed by mountains.
No history of Málaga would be complete
without those characters, many
of them anonymous, who have plied
trades – some now vanished, but others
still alive – that often strike visitors
to the city as curious.
The exhibition is articulated in three
areas, which tell the story of Málaga
and its customs, or at least some of the
many: the Roman presence and its legacy,
the city’s popular characters, and
industrialisation.
Garum or garo: the Roman Empire
leaves a mark
Olfactory notes: Marine / Saltpetre /
Rural-Herbaceous
An indispensable product in all the best
Roman kitchens, garum was a condiment
used to enhance the meal and
intensify the flavour of other foods. It
can be defined as basically a compound
of fatty pelagic fish (sardines, sprats,
mackerel, tuna …), to which were added
the innards of other large fish and plenty
of salt, and the mixture was then left
to macerate in the summer sun. In some
variants, layers of aromatic herbs were
added. Stirred frequently, it turned
into a liquid, which was subsequently
allowed to filter though a densely woven
basket, which resulted on the one
hand in a very aromatic translucent fluid
with an amber colour and a salty flavour,
and on the other a dense paste. It
was used as a substitute for salt, and
was also frequently mixed with wine,
vinegar, oil or water.
Along with the perfumes, garum was,
by weight, the most prized – and expensive
–substance in everyday use in the
Roman Empire. In addition to its nutritional
function, it was credited with the
ability to whet the appetite and to aid
digestion. An effective means of preserving
meat or fruit, it was also used
to dispel unpleasant domestic odours,
as well as being an ingredient in medicine
and cosmetics.
We are referring here to salty, humid,
marine, herbaceous odours … I perceive
this whole process through the smells
and the visual artworks of colección
olorVISUAL, letting myself be transported
by several senses. The pits of
the Roman factories where garum was
produced could be associated with the
works by Juan Olivares and Carlos Bunga:
delimitations, grids … I get the salty
tang with the video by Muntadas, and
the look of garum during the process of
its elaboration is figured in the paintings
of Thomas Werner, Herbert Hamak
and Helmut Dorner. The aromatic
herbs sometimes added to it are symbolised
by the drawing by Antonio Tocornal
and the sculpture by Joan Cera.
Popular symbols: the biznaga, the cenachero
and the espetada
Olfactory notes: White flowers / Marine
/ Smoky-Cresolic
The Malagan biznaga is a bouquet
of jasmine in the shape of a ball, the
products of a laborious preparation.
The skeleton of the flower, a wild thistle
known as a nerdo, is collected, still
green, before the summer. The nerdo is
stripped of its leaves and stalks to leave
only the main stem and the spines and
is allowed to dry until it turns a beige
colour and hardens. The jasmines are
collected early on summer evenings,
before they open, and are carefully inserted
one by one onto the spines.
In addition to its beauty and perfume,
the biznaga is also said to drive away
mosquitoes. It is the flower that symbolises
the city.
The biznaguero is a popular personage
who sells biznagas, which are carried
on a leaf of prickly pear, in the streets
of Málaga in summer.
We can say that it smells of tuberose,
ylang-ylang, acacia, gardenia, magnolia,
jasmine and lily-of-the-valley,
assuming the olfactory note that represents
this tradition: white flowers.
Bearing in mind these scents, and the
biznaga flower, I am referred to it by
Javier Campano, Toni Catany, Maggie
Cardelús, Julião Sarmento and Riita
Päivälánen, whose works are very diverse
in their characteristics. Its beauty
and subtlety I find in the artistic expressions
of Lorenzo Cambin, Joan Hernández
Pijuan, Anna Malagrida. Its perfume
is captured in the photography of Lola
Guerrera.
The cenachero, who plied a typical trade
that originated in the nineteenth
century and lasted up until the middle
of the twentieth, was a true icon of the
city. They were street peddlers of fish,
especially of the anchovies known as
vitorianos, but also of any other product
of the coastal waters of the Málaga
of the time. Remembered as strong,
well-built men, they wore a sash and
carried their wares hanging from both
arms, and would cry out to the housewives
‘Niña, los vitorianos’ and other
similar phrases as they walked the
streets of the city.
Marine tang, algae, fresh fish: smells
and colours that are transmitted in the
works of Alberto Corazón and Enrique
Brinkmann, signifying the bundles
of fresh fish for sale. Dennis Hollingsworth,
Hugo Fontela, Agustín Ibarrola
and Stephen Dean communicate that
smell of fish, of the sea, and at the same
time the power of the cenachero’s resonant
cries.
All along the coast of Málaga, one of the
most widespread recollections must be
the smell of sardines grilling slowly on
the glowing embers of a wood fire on
the beach. The sea breeze, the smoke,
and the heat of summer are an explosion
of olfactory memory. The key motif
here is the espeto or the espetada:
the skewer and the skewering central
to the art of grilling fish, which goes
back to the time of the Phoenicians,
and passed on by way of Romans and
Arabs, taking advantage of the beached
boats as windbreaks for the sea breeze.
The espetero is the person responsible
for skewering the fish, impaling them
on split canes and grilling them over
embers of olive and almond wood, paying
close attention to the wind to regulate
the cooking process. This traditional
open-air delicacy is just as popular today.
Hannah Collins and her photograph Sardines,
perhaps the most visual work
of the whole project, almost literally
brings the smell of fish to my nostrils.
Bianca Beck, Bernhard Martin, Anne-
Lise Coste and Bernardí Roig summon
the smell of burning and the cooking
of the sea’s fruits, mixed with the salty
breeze of the beach. Smoky, cresolic, coniferous
and fishy smells.
Industrialisation and trade: the modernisation
of the city
Olfactory notes: Metallic / Dusty / Tobacco
/ Honeyed-Sugary
During the first half of the nineteenth
century, Málaga was at the forefront of
industrial development in Spain, second
only to Catalonia, its pioneering industrialisation
financed by agriculture and
trade. This really took off in 1826 with
the creation of two companies for iron
smelting and casting to meet the demand
for iron fittings in the manufacture
of the casks used in the bottling of
wine and the packaging of agricultural
products for export.
After a difficult start, satisfactory results
were obtained in 1831, when the
La Concepción company built new tall
furnaces to replace the original low
furnaces, and puddling furnaces with
which to obtain the optimum quality of
finished products.
Smells of steel, iron, copper, brass,
bronze and oxide are the effluvia that
come to my memory when this type of
industry is talked about. Clare Langan,
Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Pello Irazu, Jordi
Colomer, Chakaia Booker and the pictorial
sculpture by Michiel Ceulers all refer
us to fire, metal, force, dirt … elements
associated with these processes.
But it was not only the metal foundries
that put Málaga on the industrial
map. Mills for the manufacture of
yarns and fabrics in cotton, linen and
hemp also had an important role. Industrial
Málagueña, S.A. employed as
many as 1,500 people, mostly women,
in its workshops, offices, warehouses,
repair shops and workers housing, and
in due course a second textile factory,
La Aurora, opened.
Smells of cotton flower, wind, chalk, are
among the characteristics of the olfactory
note that represents the manufacture
of spun yarns. The spinners feature
in the video by Gabriela Gerosa,
and the looms figure in the sculpture by
Alfredo Álvarez-Plágaro. Enzo Mianes
represents the manufacturing of the
products, while the plaster sculpture
by Alex Jasch seeks to depict the dust
thrown up by all the bustling activity of
these factories.
The Málaga tobacco factory was built
between 1923 and 1927, though it was
not officially inaugurated until September
1934, after a further three years of
modification in order to increase their
capacity and expand the range of
Spanish products with new lines capable
of gaining a share in different markets.
The Málaga factory was a pioneer
in this regard, with the introduction
of modern technologies that set new
standards in the tobacco industry of
the twentieth century. These advances,
which were introduced into every
stage of the manufacturing process, allowed
the factory to produce inexpensive
quality cigars that could rival those
from the Canary Islands and Cuba. For
all of these reasons, the Tabacalera tobacco
company considered the Málaga
factory as a critical factor in its competitive
strategy.
Woody, pipe tobacco, ash and burnt
wood are smells that evoke the tobacco
factory, although some of these odours
may be mixed with those that are produced
when the tobacco is lit. Thus,
Fleur Noguera’s video, Ángel Alonso’s
sculpture and the symbolism of Chema
Madoz’s photography refer us to
the factory and its production, while
Douglas Gordon, Eulàlia Valldosera,
Pamen Pereira, José Luis Pascual and
David Nash transmit the finished product
and the aromas emanating from its
consumption.
Thanks to its subtropical climate, the
coast of Malaga and Granada was a
crucial area for the cultivation of sugarcane,
which generated a sugar industry
of enormous importance. The Málaga
seaboard was known as the Sugarcane
Coast, and the province had a considerable
number of sugar mills and factories,
many of them in operation since
the sixteenth century. Sugar production
in the province reached 115,000
tonnes a year by the end of the 1960s.
For the zafra, the harvesting of the sugarcane,
the sector employed thousands
of day-labourers known as monderos.
Their job was to strip the canes, cleaning
off the leaves, and they laboured at
their hard, hot, punishing work from
sunrise to sunset, their eyes scorched
by the burning leaves, their clothes and
skin impregnated with soot and molasses
from the cane.
Sugarcane cultivation and the sugar
industry went into decline in the nineteen
sixties and has now disappeared.
Its former sites have been occupied by
the tourism-based property boom and
by other crops such as avocado and
mango.
Smell of honey, of sugar, of sweetness.
In evoking the sugar industry,
the smells we remember are always
pleasant, and this is shown us by the
paintings of Ángela de la Cruz and Ruth
Morán or the photography of Duane
Michals. However, the production process,
especially in the years to which
we have referred, was hard, and this is
interpreted with the paintings of Fernando
Sinaga, Guillermo Pfaff and Robert
Pan, whose colours make us think
of the smells impregnating the skin and
clothes of the day-labourers during the
zafra: burnt and molasses.
I hope that this selection of some of the
historical moments and customs that
have particularly caught my attention
as locally specific may be to the liking
of the people of Málaga. The interpretation
of these things by means of works
of art is always personal, seconded by
the complicity of smells that we recall
without being conscious of it, but that
are there, filed away.
The sense of smell is profoundly subjective
and the most ethereal of all. Smells
have been and continue to between us,
without being. Anchored in memory yet
transient, they represent the evanescence
of existence and the possibility
of eternity. colección olorVISUAL communicates
these ideas and allows our
olfactory memory to awaken our most
intimate memories … Let’s have a sniff!