Isla, Jorge

The starting point for¿Por qué las viviendas obreras tienen hastiales de colores? was the architecture of the housing cooperatives of the 1911-1936 Affordable Housing Act in Bizkaia. That legislation, under the aegis of Vizcaya Provincial Government and Bilbao City Council, proposed a series of measures to offset the unhealthy housing conditions that workers suffered; that was the direct consequence in the steel-making boom, which led to huge migration from the countryside to the city, where they were forced into hot bedding and extremely decrepit housing. After that legislation had been passed in 1911, Bilbao and its surrounding area witnessed houses being built under that law. One of the styles used for their frontages was inspired by Neo-Basque architecture, where can find patterns in common that generate cultural connections in order to achieve the quintessential image of the farmstead.

Jorge Isla (Huesca, 1992) graduated in audiovisual communication from San Jorge University, has a Master’s Degree in Artistic Production from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, and a Master’s Degree in Authored Photography Projects from the Escuela Lens in Madrid. His art examines the economic, social and political mechanisms of contemporary society by subverting their status by means of dichotomies such as reality & fiction, cause & effect, and presence & absence. It represents a set of ideas based on on the concepts of borders, reinterpretation and resignification as the conceptual object from research using mixed mediums – writing, creation images, video and installation – according to the nature of each project.