A Melting Polar Bear and Surreal Wildlife Sculptures Burn in the Annual Falles Spectacle
Photograph © Carlos Segura. All photographs shared with permission
After a COVID-related hiatus, the annual Falles pageant in Valencia, Spain, returned this 12 months with an extravagant celebration stuffed with flames and sparks. The five-day pyrotechnic occasion attracts 1000’s of individuals into the streets every March to witness fireworks, explosions, and a wide range of sculptures burn to the bottom, and on the coronary heart of this 12 months’s manufacturing was a 23-foot polar bear by artist Antonio Segura, aka Dulk (beforehand).
Following works by PichiAvo, Okuda San Miguel, and Escif in earlier iterations, Dulk’s fantastical and surreal “Defend What You Love” featured wildlife and crops balanced on prime of the cold-weather creature. Two years within the making, the monumental piece was constructed with cardboard and wooden, and a group assembled the roughly 30 particular person vignettes across the central determine as soon as on web site. Every of the works speaks to the pressing want to deal with the local weather disaster, which Dulk explains:
Now we have the mom polar bear in the primary sq. for falles, her fur melting like a candle as different animals take refuge on and round her. They’re misplaced and they’re all in the hunt for a brand new habitat… The koala represents the wildfires of Australia in 2019/2020 the place over 60,000 of the creatures misplaced their lives. The orangutan represents Borneo the place their fast decline as a species is a direct consequence from looking, logging Palm oil, and developments in agroforestry. The fish turns to a can, to mirror the lack of marine life from overfishing.
“Defend What You Love,” which burned this final weekend, is a poetic reminder of how rapidly loss can happen. “Whereas that is only a metaphor it might develop into our actuality until we start to vary our behaviour,” Dulk tells Charlotte Pyatt in an interview with Juxtapoz. “I hope the occasion greater than the rest, encourages consciousness and motion for these pressing issues.”
The Spanish artist additionally has smaller works on view at Valencia’s Tuesday to Friday by means of April 21 and Centre del Carme by means of Might 8 to coincide with the occasion. See extra of his items and behind-the-scenes have a look at the spectacular pageant on Instagram.
Photographs © Jesus Amable
Photograph © Jesus Amable
Photograph © Jesus Amable
Photograph © Jesus Amable
Photograph © Carlos Segura
Photograph © Carlos Segura
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