The Móstoles City Council, governed since May by the PP and Vox, canceled a photographic exhibition by the Madrid artist Olga Barra, known as Dhikena, considering that it “attacks morality.” The Department of Culture decided to suspend the exhibition even though it had been selected by a commission of experts, which scheduled its opening for this month. The Culture area is the only portfolio in the hands of Vox, whose head, Daniel Martín, is behind the veto for going “against its principles,” as revealed by the officials in charge of communicating the order to the artist.
According to the sequence of events that this newspaper has been able to verify according to the emails sent with the letterhead of the Department of Culture of the City Council, it all began in September, when the City Council of Móstoles published the rules to host an exhibition “open to all artists who wish to do so” with the aim of revitalizing the cultural offering of this city in the southwest of the Community of Madrid, and making their work known. The photographer Dhikena sent her portfolio and almost three months later, on December 28, she was officially informed that she had been selected from more than 120 artists from all over Spain. According to the published bases, a “commission of technicians and experts” selected her work, consisting of 20 striking portraits with an important erotic charge and religious allusions, to be exhibited at the El Soto cultural center.
On January 10, those in charge of the cultural center contacted Dhikena to finalize the details about the number of works to be exhibited, their size, the assembly or the insurance that would be contracted. But on January 19, the photographer received a call from an official who, on behalf of the Department of Culture, informed her that there had been an “error” and announced that it was impossible for her works to be exhibited because “they violate morality.” of the citizens,” recalls the photographer. “These are cultural centers where children and parents come who may feel attacked. This cannot be displayed in a place like this,” said the official.
One of the arguments for canceling the exhibition is that it would be held in the entrance area of the El Soto cultural center, a place where audiences of all ages pass by to participate in yoga, ceramics or children’s painting workshops. However, when it was proposed to the Vox councilor to move the exhibition to another place, he stated: “I have to be faithful to my principles, if it does not seem appropriate to me for El Soto, it does not seem appropriate to me for any other cultural center either,” he said. to the officials involved with whom this newspaper has been able to speak.
“They have hit us,” the official who announced the cancellation acknowledged in conversation with this newspaper.
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Since the municipal elections on May 28, the Popular Party governs the second most important city in the Community of Madrid in alliance with Vox, which manages the council’s Culture portfolio. With 210,000 inhabitants, Móstoles is the jewel in the crown of the town councils conquered by the right in the elections, both for its size and its symbolism. On March 28, the PP obtained 12 councilors in Móstoles, but agreed with Vox to guarantee an absolute majority.
Before finding the Móstoles wall, the photographer Dhikena had exhibited at the Matadero in Madrid, the Bilbao Art Fair or the Utrecht Contemporary Art Fair (Holland), although she has mainly done so in Madrid towns such as San Fernando de Henares or Coslada. “They have treated me with little respect,” lamented the Madrid photographer upon learning of the cancellation. Finally, the Móstoles exhibition was replaced by the paintings of the Belgian painter Johanna Failer, which will occupy the same place.
From Más Madrid, Ana Tejero, head of equality, said: “Móstoles deserves a much more innovative and ambitious cultural management, and we are not going to allow Vox, with the connivance of the PP, to start a censorship crusade against artists for the mere fact that they do not represent their medieval values. “What Vox cannot do is convert its morals and prejudices into public policies.”
Since the entry of Vox into several city councils in the Community of Madrid, the world of culture has been resentful. The best-known controversy was what happened in Valdemorillo due to the cancellation of a performance of Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, a classic of 20th century literature where feminism and transsexuality are discussed. The theater producer Pablo Huetos denounced in a public letter an ideological veto that the mayor of the PP, Santiago Villena, angrily rejected, claiming to be the victim of a media attack.
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