As part of the parallel activities, the ReciclArt route is being organized, allowing the public to take a tour of the artAmore Sitges and OOA Gallery galleries, and the Meliá Sitges, Sabàtic Sitges Hotel, Hotel Calipolis and Hotel Estela Barcelona hotels, which are exhibiting large-format works by artists linked to the festival. The Eurostars Sitges Hotel has also become involved with a performance.
An art route where you can see works based on upcycling that explore the multiple dimensions of recycling as an expressive and critical tool.
artAmore Sitges
Parellades, 57 – Sitges • 931427207 • info@artamoresitges.com • www.artamoresitges.com
Description: Since 2014, art gallery and craft shop in the center of Sitges. More than 160 artists and craftsmen show their work at artAmore Sitges, where you can see a permanent exhibition of recycled art.
Exhibition: Exhibition by JM Pastó, MOUSE?, an exhibition of artistic recycling sculptures by Catalan artist Josep M. Pastó, on view from June 21 to August 25. In this playful and emotionally rich exhibition, Pastó reinterprets the universal icons of Mickey and Minnie Mouse through a highly personal technique: assemblage using recycled materials. Each piece is the result of meticulous searches for forgotten objects, scrap metal, discarded wood, worn-out fragments, which he transforms and integrates with artisanal precision and artistic sensitivity.
Josep M. Pastó, who lives in Sant Pere de Ribes, is a self-taught artist with roots in the Lleida region. While still in high school, he discovered his artistic passion through classes with Carme Benet in Les Borges Blanques. This early interest led him to enroll independently at the Escola d’Arts Aplicades i Oficis Artístics de Tàrrega. Though he later pursued a career in telecommunications engineering which he still practices today, creative expression has always been central to his life: from working with clay and wood to object transformation and photography. His artistic approach blends impulsive creativity with a strong respect for manual processes, often shaped by the wisdom of his father.
OOA Gallery
c/ Nou, 1 – Sitges • 618 356 351 • sorella@outofafricagallery.com • www.outofafricagallery.com
Description: Founded in 2011 by Sorella Acosta in Sitges, OOA GALLERY is dedicated to African, African-American and contemporary African-American artists. It represents both emerging talents and established figures, whose work explores identity, heritage and urgent social narratives.
Exhibition:
Malena Fridman (Buenos Aires, 1972)
FTrained in Fine Arts and graduating in 1995 with a specialization in painting from the Complutense University of Madrid, Fridman continued her studies there, completing two modules in sculptural techniques and expanding her skills in set construction and props at the Center for Stage Technology. Through the performing arts, she discovered a passion for creating as a means of communication, a bond that grew stronger in theater scenography and solidified in the audiovisual world, where she directed the artistic campaigns for social communication at Mediaset Spain.
This aspect of social transformation through art led her to embark on personal projects in sculpture, painting, installation, and textile art—an intimate space for experimentation and reflection on the fragility of nature and life. Her installation Eco-Fémina centers on the connection between woman and nature, as a life-giver encircled by the many faces of humanity. Lies, greed, and control are threatening elements within society.
The endangered Cantabrian brown bear (Ursus arctos), whose habitat extends from the Ancares mountains of Lugo in Galicia to western Cantabria, is a recurring symbol in her work. This species is classified as ‘endangered’ in Spain’s Catalogue of Threatened Species, underscoring the theme of human impact on nature.
Meliá Sitges Hotel
Joan Salvat Papasseit, 38 – Sitges • 938 110 811 • www.melia.com
Ocean Sole ( Nairobi, Kenia, 2006)
The name Ocean Sole plays with the words “sole” and “soul”, which sound the same. It is a social enterprise from Kenya that stands out for combining environmental awareness with the creation of art and the generation of employment. It organises beach and waterway clean-ups, reuses tons of flip flops in artwork and decorative objects and employs more than 800 people.
The actions of this initiative want to make a difference in the difficult situation of the oceans and their spirit is to return what they earn to change the lives of many, through employment, education and food.
Often these actions go viral on social media and this is how Drap-Art discovered this initiative in 2006 and collaborates with it, since 2018.
Hotel Calipolis
Avenida Sofia, 2, Sitges • 93 894 15 00 • www.hotelcalipolis.com
HA Schult (Parchim, Alemania, 1939)
HA Schult, a great representative of action art and sustainable art, studied at the prestigious Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf alongside colleagues who later became relevant figures for art and the environment such as the well-known conceptual artist Joseph Beuys, who was one of the founders of the German Green Party. Schult participated twice in Documenta and his work is part of public and private collections around the world.
He is a pioneering artist in foreseeing and denouncing ecological problems through art. And even today his actions still draw attention in the media to climate change, water quality and garbage around the world.
A paradigmatic example of his work is Trash People, a piece for which he created an army of 1,000 life-size anthropomorphic figures from cans and electronic waste. HA Schult has exhibited and photographed this work in emblematic places on the five continents with the aim of drawing attention to excess consumption and the waste it causes.
In this exhibition we show one of the figures that make up the Trash People installation accompanied by videos and photographs of the documented actions.
Hotel Sabàtic Sitges
Avenida Sofia, 65, Sitges • 936 09 49 99 • www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/bcnks-sabatic-sitges-autograph-collection/overview
Ignat C. de Michaelis (Barcelona, 1968)
In this artwork, Ignat C. de Michaelis (Àlex Voltá) expresses his disagreement with an economic and social system developed around oil. The artist criticizes the damage to the environment caused by the massive use of this fossil fuel. Through a barrel of crude oil oxidized on most of its surface and intervened with gold leaf, the artist criticizes the climate crisis caused by the massive use of petroleum in recent decades and highlights the paradigm shift in which we find ourselves due to the reduction of fuel reserves.
Hotel Estela Barcelona
Avda. Port d’Aiguadolç, 8, Sitges • 93 811 45 45 • www.hotelestela.com
Ricardo Moraga (Santiago de Chile, 1955)
Chilean hyperrealist painter and sculptor established in Barcelona for more than 20 years. He holds a degree in Fine Arts from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. He has a long career as a professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Catholic University of Santiago de Chile and in advertising as well as film illustrator in the USA and France. He is currently working exclusively on his artistic creation. He has made numerous interventions at the Hotel de l’Art, such as Silence in blue (Hab. 113), a fresco painted in the Istar Hall and a multitude of small decorative interventions in a large number of rooms.
In his sculptural work, he recycles waste materials such as wood and old books, mixed with oxidized metal sheets and objects. This obsession with oxide is closely related to an intention on the part of the artist to reflect the passage of time that affects all things and beings.
