Like many people, members of the collective Baztan Arte-Kale also have their eyes on Palestine. “We too, to put it another way, are excited,” says a member of the collective who has not wanted to name ARGIA. The members of the group work in very diverse artistic disciplines, and one of them promoted the project of representing Palestinian faces in broken crystals. It is a technique that consists of producing images breaking the glass with the hammer and punch. Artistic and political concern has encouraged the exhibition.

They could have done more, but in the end they have broken eleven crystals. “At the moment we had to leave because the situation is very serious,” said the group. Businesses that have asked for permission to move to the shop window and have asked to take part in the initiative have been very pleased with the proposal, which was given the right to do so shortly with photographs of what they were doing.

They have announced that businesses have been well chosen not to forget that “while living our lives, Israel kills on a daily basis.” In fact, their goal is that every time we go to the bar to take a drink, we remember that the Palestinians have to drink contaminated water; that when we are going to buy clothes, the Palestinians have had to leave them between garbage and waste; or when we are going to tattoo our skin, the wounds forever mark the bodies of the Palestinians.

“We wanted to touch all aspects of life: bars that are part of leisure, clothing and footwear shops, telecommunications companies… Because we usually go to certain bars to denounce, it was clear that we had to overcome these usual schemes and cross the Casco Viejo in its entirety.”

Maybe you go beyond the Old Town of Bilbao. They report that they have called for more sites to ask if at the end of the exhibition in Bilbao they would move to another municipality: “If possible, we would like to open it, we would like to. The exhibition is an excuse to reach more people the theme and the message.”

An example of this was the one that was made on Friday at the initiative of several agents: they put on the streets of the Casco Viejo the sneakers and the names of some Palestinian children killed.

Baztan-Arte Collective

The Baztan-Arte Colectivo was born “a few months ago”, because many artists felt the need to create and organize collectively and did not want to “act as individuals in the artistic militancy.”

“The Baztan-Arte Collective brings together people with conscience, and we believe that through art we can influence our lives and adapt our daily lives,” explains a member of the collective to ARGIA. The first artistic work they have officially and publicly placed is Hautsia: “On several streets there are vestiges of our art that we have not said are ours. We wanted discretion, not least because the art on the street is often subject to institutional censorship. We do not claim most of the time, because we do not want them to disappear. Our art is street art and it is ephemeral.”