Construint un Horitzó. Barcelona i Gaza

An exhibition on the bond of solidarity between Barcelona and Gaza, two Mediterranean cities that have spent almost thirty years collaborating on shared urban planning projects and on the life of their streets.

Construint un Horitzó offers a look at the relationship between Barcelona and Gaza, based on the collaboration between technicians from both cities. For almost thirty years they have designed together squares, parks and seafronts with a shared urban vision: cities that open onto the public realm and the sea. The exhibition is housed in the Oliva Artés space of the Museu d'Història de Barcelona and proposes imagining a future from both shores.

Most of those projects barely got past the drawing board. The central example is the Barcelona Peace Park, in the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood, inaugurated and destroyed during a war. Both cities rebuilt it, and today it is once again in ruins. The exhibition revolves around that idea of drawing, building, losing and starting again. It also looks at the role of citizens, with campaigns demanding commitment from the institutions, demonstrations, cultural events and flotillas that set sail from the port.

The exhibition also dwells on the origins of the expulsion of a people. In 1982, the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the Palestinian historian Elias Sanbar analysed in the French daily Libération how a territory is emptied out. That reflection sounded like a warning at the time, and the Israeli offensive has reduced entire neighbourhoods of Gaza to rubble.