The Canary Islands Revisited (7 vol.)

The Canary Islands Revisited project, directed by Elba Benítez Gallery and supported by the Canary Islands Government, began in January 2000 and was completed in January 2003 with the publication of 7 books, one for each island.

The project has strived to encourage the establishment of an alternative visual representation of the archipelago. The national and international standing and importance of a community or a nation is inseparable from the image which is projected beyond its frontiers. The many images of the Canary Islands are well known around the world, but they usually present an extremely limited view of their physical and cultural features, of their potential, their appeal and their attractions. In effect, the majority of these images depict the islands’ natural and social state in a most conventional manner.

To accomplish this, 7 internationally recognized artists, who use photography as their means of expression, were each allocated one of the islands in which to make their images. They have focused on the landscape, on the natural, social and human geography, freely exploring the island, in this way reflecting the conviction that the Canary Islands are fundamentally a complex fusion of geography -or geographies- and the communities that interact with it.
The artists who have taken part in the project are: 
Augusto Alves da Silva (Portugal, 1963) in La Gomera
Miriam Bäckström (Sweden, 1967) in Tenerife
Oladélé Ajiboyé Bamgboyé (Nigeria, 1963) in La Palma
Olafur Eliasson ( Denmark, 1967) in Lanzarote
Craigie Horsfield ( England, 1949) in El Hierro
Miguel Rio Branco (Las Palmas, 1946) in Gran Canaria 
Montserrat Soto ( Barcelona, 1961) in Fuerteventura

In addition to the pictures, all of the books, with the exception of the one about El Hierro, contain original texts by  writers from the Canary Islands who have employed a variety of literary genres, from memoirs to screenplay, to convey their experience  of the islands to the reader. In the book about El Hierro the text consists of the islanders' own voices taken from recorded interviews.

The following writers have taken part in this project:
Fernando Gómez Aguilera (San Felices de Buelna, Cantabria, 1962) in the book about Lanzarote
Alejandro Krawietz (Tenerife, 1970) in the book about La Gomera
Andrés Koppel (Freiburg, 1964) in the book about Tenerife
Nicolás Melini (Santa Cruz de La Palma, 1969)
in the book about La Palma
Eugenio Padorno( Barcelona, 1943)in the book about Fuerteventura
Octavio y Antonio Zaya (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1954)
in the book about Gran Canaria

The books are bilingual (Spanish and English). Published by Editorial Actar (Barcelona) they benefit from a wide national and international distribution.

Press Release ArtNexus.com