Thumbnail
Title: 
Escala 1:1
Date: 
06-02-2025 / 27-04-2025
Place: 
Exhibition Hall, floor -2
Artist(s): 
Sádaba, Ixone (1977- )
Curator(s): 
Guerra, Carles (1965- )
Produced by: 
Azkuna Zentroa - Alhóndiga Bilbao
Type: 
Exhibition
Tags: 
Art - Research
Photography
City planning
Environnement
Summary: 
The Escala 1:1 (Scale 1:1) exhibition showcases a photographic research conducted by Ixone Sádaba (Bilbao) regarding the material, symbolic, and political legacy of the Lemoiz nuclear power plant. Currently, the remains of this facility that never became operational show signs of relentless neglect and decay. On the brink of disappearance, this concrete monolith amalgamates all the layers of its history and the potential future that the battered state of this infrastructure still allows us to envision.

Access to the area surrounding the plant remains closed to public scrutiny. However, vegetation continues to thrive within the site. Nothing has been able to halt its expansion in a place where history, shaped by violence and civil unrest, remains evident. The troubled legacy associated with Lemoiz continues to exert its pervasive influence. With all these elements, this artistic project curated by Carles Guerra (Amposta) imagines a new access policy through which the subject of the power plant could become part of a public debate.

Ixone Sádaba approaches this restitution exercise by screening life-sized fragments of the structures at the Lemoiz facility inside the exhibition halls of Azkuna Zentroa. To this aim, she recreates the plant on a 1:1 scale inside the Alhóndiga, a gesture that encourages breaking away from the incomprehensibility of this space, steeped in history and elusive to the eye, albeit at the expense of a presentation of no less monumental fragments.
Description: 
The exhibition invites us to observe – much like an operator who has received clear and concise instructions - several sequences of photographic shots reconstructing the walls and views of the complex built in Cala Basordas between 1972 and 1984. This is how the images, screened on the wall of the exhibition hall, act as a proxy, a substitute that gives visitors a glimpse into a space that was closed to the public for decades.

This photographic collection – specifically conceived to address the Lemoiz issue - is part of the materials gathered by Ixone Sádaba over the course of a four-year research. It is a wide-ranging initiative that focuses on the use of industrial and corporate photography, and includes images of the plant under construction, the ruins of the site itself and surrounding area.

The project as a whole also includes a replica of the 1974 observation deck originally built to accommodate site visits. Previously located on a hill near the road leading to Lemoiz, it is now positioned at the entrance to the main exhibition space, serving as a vantage point. The observatory is a symbol of past technical, political and cognitive prowess, the product of an accumulation of capital.
Related activities: 
Aprendiendo de Lemoiz. Contaminación política, fotografía y postconflicto
Taller-energía y naturaleza: El herbario de Lemoiz

Appears in Collections:
Exhibitions