Kathleen Day & Francisco López Riopedre 2022

The saturation of colours, patterns, and symbols in Santo Domingo Colour Dispenser lends itself to the multi-cultural history of the neighbourhood in which it was created, Santo Domingo. The patterns that occur throughout the mural are inspired by the designs on the Hydraulic Tiles of Catalunya. They are also inspired by the patterns in Ukrainian Folk Art, specifically Pysanky (decorated Easter Eggs). There are similarities between the designs of Catalan Hydraulic Tiles and Pysanky, that it is easy to combine the two into a single piece of art.

This confluence of cultures lends itself to our personal history, but also to the history of Santo Domingo: a neighbourhood that hosted migrant workers to build the Riba-roja Dam. Furthermore, we chose to incorporate symbols special to the village of Riba-roja d’Ebre. These include an Olive Oil reserve, the cross from the Riba-roja flag, a cat, and a fig leaf.  

HOODOOLAB is an artistic collective created in 2016 by Kathleen Day and Francisco Riopedre. The project was born from the need for both of them to investigate and generate new languages ​​in the field of visual arts, especially in photography. Analogue being the starting point of our creative process and experimentation. “One of the key factors that led us to create this project has been the interest in preserving the historical and documentary aspect of anonymous photography from the 20th century. The other factor was to make a place to show our personal projects. Memory and the passage of time are the common denominator between these two differentiated but complementary parts of HOODOOLAB.
From our platform we want to vindicate the analogue as a form of contemporary expression as opposed to the digital monopoly.”