09/17 – 7 p.m. Opening: BINGO by Bárbara Balcells Matas

A project of Bárbara Balcells Matas

From September 10 to October 31, 2026

This project is born from the words that the artist’s grandmother wrote about the house where she had lived for more than sixty years, shortly before entering a residence. Through visits to a home for the elderly and conversations with its residents, the work reflects on the idea of ​​home, memory and uprooting. Daily routines and shared spaces, such as the weekly bingo, become symbols of a present marked by resignation, but also by the need for community and comfort. The project explores how the spaces we inhabit continue to exist within us, even when we can no longer return to them.

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«Our nest is no longer, but it will always be in my thoughts. With these words, my grandmother referred to what was her home for more than sixty years. We found them days after his death, in the few pages he didn’t tear out of his diary. In them, he recounted his decision to go live in a residence, where he spent the last months of his life. A decision that I did not understand and that I lived as a mourner. And yet, “the nest ceased to be”. This is what my grandmother wrote and this is what she wanted us to know: spaces are fragile, time destroys them.

In an attempt to understand this, I started visiting a nursing home down the street from my house. Little by little I was establishing bonds with the residents and finding my place there. Routines order the days: meals, activities and rest. Every Wednesday, bingo brings together many of the residents in the common room. The singing of the numbers, repeated like a ritual, dictates the rhythm of a present marked by resignation and, at the same time, comforts it by offering an instant of shared play. The residence functions as a space of care, but also of isolation, which redefines the relationship of the people who inhabit it with what they have left behind.

In the conversations with residents throughout my visits, collected in a publication that complements the project, the idea of ​​home appears continuously. A place that, over the years, becomes imprecise, but that, as my grandmother wrote, is always in thought. This work wants to explore this intangible permanence: how, despite the uprooting and loss of physical spaces, the memory of how we inhabit them accompanies and comforts us.”

Bárbara Balcells Matas

Opening: September 17 at 7 p.m.

Sala Montserrat Roig

Winning project of the Visionat SIGMA 2025