HAND-BACK OUR IMAGES

What do we see in a beauty so altered by development as in Mallorca?

What do we feel when the local population rejects tourism because it prevents them from living or finding housing?

Who has decided, and why has the disappearance of those now non-existent landscapes from our childhood been allowed as a condition of our time?

Where is the human element in tourism?

I have had the opportunity to visit and explore the archives of Casa Planas in Palma de Mallorca and I want to present an artistic proposal based on some images from their vast photographic archive. Casa Planas is an independent project born in response to the urgent need to interpret tourism in the Balearic Islands.

As the archive shows, Mallorca is a landscape mediated by fabricated utopian images; pristine skies, unimaginable seas, dreamy coves—versus the reality of vegetation overwhelmingly covered by asphalt and concrete. An efficient claim for tourism, which came in numbers that today are a problem; it is not only impossible to enjoy an environment free from the violence brought by mass tourism, but the housing crisis also proves that the situation has become a matter of social conflict.

Hand-back our images is a radical challenge to tourism. As impossible to achieve as it is to continue doing nothing.