Madrid is full of corners with history that have been forced to change hands more than once. Among them is the old Casa de las Alhajas (Calle de las Hileras, 18), which is a good example of fashionable architecture in the city during the 19th century. It was designed in 1870 by Fernando Arbós y Tremanti, creator of such emblematic spaces as the Pantheon of Illustrious Men.
The Casa de las Alhajas is the current teaching laboratory belonging to Teamlabs, a school dedicated to pedagogical innovation, which has its own masters and a university degree. The study center has chosen this space to give it a new life, and for this it has needed the collaboration of Gonzalo Martín, aka Taquen: a Galician painter who has decorated streets in Belgium, Switzerland, Nepal, Russia, Belgium and many other countries around the world.
Taquen has painted there The Journey, a mural inspired by the way of teaching proposed by Teamlabs. The work features dozens of starlings flying toward the same direction. “Starlings are very particular birds, which live in large groups creating a sort of clouds formed by hundreds of specimens. They perform random dances in perfect harmony, an impeccable work that is difficult to understand,” says the artist.
Taquen’s signature in Moratalaz
The journey is not the only work that the Galician painter has captured in Madrid in recent months. In September of this year, he collaborated in Muraltalaz: a City Hall project in which he and other urban artists collaborated to decorate municipal buildings in Moratalaz and develop outdoor muralism in the neighborhood.
Taquen‘s work in Moratalaz, entitled Ciegos de luz azul, is on the façade of the Pío Baroja kindergarten and elementary school. It is a diptych in which the worst face of the digital era, which promotes isolation and life dissatisfaction of the young population is captured.
Through his Instagram account, the painter explains that “there are more and more people who depend on their cell phones and who, unfortunately, have stopped relating to the world to end up socially isolated”. With this work, the artist shows his concern for the self-esteem problems derived from the continuous comparison, the deterioration of the closest relationships and the loss of interest in the present moment.