Objects and Desires

Objects and Desires compares the meaning, emotional value, and symbolic transformation of objects moving between Spain and Morocco through migration, tourism, informal economies, and cross-border exchange.

Developed through encounters, observation, interviews, and material research in Marrakech and Southern Spain, the project reflects on how objects carry desires, projections, social aspirations, and survival strategies across different cultural and economic contexts.

Rather than approaching objects as neutral commodities, the project investigates them as emotional and political carriers embedded within systems of mobility, labour, tourism, and inequality.

The research later became one of the conceptual foundations for El Peso de mis Vecinas, where cross-border movement, informal labour, and migratory experience are further explored through voice, song, neighbourhood relations, and embodied collaboration.

Process

The project was developed through field research, drawing, sound recording, observation, and informal conversations carried out between Catalunya, Melilla, and Marrakech.

Using a sketchbook and portable audio recorder, the artist established contact with carpet sellers, ironers, housewives, merchants, travellers, and other people connected to the circulation and trade of textiles and domestic objects across the Spanish-Moroccan border context.

The central object of the research became the blanket: on one side, the industrial synthetic blankets transported through the Melilla border by the so-called porteadoras; on the other, the handwoven Moroccan blankets purchased mainly through tourist economies. Through drawing, listening, questioning, and exchange, the project investigates how objects accumulate emotional projections, economic desires, cultural hierarchies, and systems of value.

As part of the process, the artist carried out a performative sell-buy experiment by transporting a soft industrial blanket from Melilla to Marrakech following routes associated with contraband circulation, later selling it to a Moroccan woman in order to purchase a handwoven blanket for the same price.

Rather than functioning as anthropological documentation, the process approaches the circulation of objects as an embodied and affective experience in which desire, exchange, intimacy, labour, and projection become entangled.

Forms

Radio performance: a live reading through the artist’s sketchbook accompanied by field recordings collected during the research process

Sketchbook drawings: observational drawings documenting encounters, gestures, domestic objects, and situations linked to textile circulation and trade

Field recordings: audio material capturing conversations, environments, and everyday activities surrounding the movement of goods and people

Performative sell-buy experiment: a performative exchange involving the transport, sale, and replacement of blankets across different economic and cultural contexts

Wrapped object installation: an installation element connected to the circulation, concealment, and exchange of goods

Together, these forms construct a fragmented documentary and performative archive investigating the emotional and political life of objects in movement.

Context

Developed between Barcelona, Melilla, and Marrakech, the project forms an early research foundation for El Peso de mis Vecinas, where cross-border labour, migratory experience, neighbourhood relations, and embodied collaboration are later expanded through voice and collective singing.

The project was supported by Institut Ramon Llull and developed through residencies at Jiwar Creació i Societat and Le18.