Antropología Urbana I

Ceramic and cardboard box
75 x 33 x 24 cm

Antropología Urbana I is the plastic translation of a scene which Tamara Arroyo observed in the streets of Madrid, the capital city in which the artist lives and works, and whose urban space serves as the main reference point for her practice – as the title of the work emphasises. Ordinary packaging materials take on a new, permanent existence: ceramics transform a soft, fluid container into a sculpture that is both solid and brittle, while a cardboard box becomes a pedestal. This work is a reminder that the city is a lived-in, inhabited space, and that the traces of our consumption in a context of urbanisation and globalisation can be found everywhere by those who know how to observe them; it is in these traces that the artist finds creative potential.