2017 — Sarah Savage

Artistic Proposal

March 3rd 2025

Sala Horno, La ciudadela, Pamplona

The Citadel of Pamplona, declared a Site of Cultural Interest in 1973, has great potential for historical evocation. The Citadel serves as the physical and conceptual support for the creation of my artistic proposal, and in particular, the Oven, the ideal space imagined for its exhibition.

My proposal is framed within historical memory. Marije Hristova, a specialist in the field, examines historical memory in the context of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime and explains how it is a struggle to maintain the memory of the past in our present, especially of the bodies that disappeared in the war. Marije explains how the memory of history becomes visible through fragments and how difficult it is to acquire this information from a silenced past. With my proposal, I aim to create a space that invites us to remember the people shot during the Spanish Civil War at the Puerta del Socorro in the Citadel of Pamplona.

I will use charcoal on paper as my medium. Each drawing, like a map, denotes the walking routes around the ravelins. Through the use of marks, I want to suggest the presence of bodies along the paths. Specifically, the vertical mark represents the upright body; the horizontal, the death of the body; and the cross, the transcendence of death. The marks will evolve from vertical along Army Avenue to crosses at the Puerta del Socorro and horizontal in the demolished area. This evolution is captured in the drawings on the five sheets of paper that correlatively represent the five bastions that gave the Citadel its original five-pointed star shape.

I decided to use charcoal, obtained by charring light wood. The Citadel, the subject of my drawings, has been subjected to fire, as have the bodies, victims of the carbon from gunpowder. I have felt it as a form of adaptation, especially when the Oven, due to the function for which it was conceived back in the 16th century, today suggests fire, carbonization and accumulated soot.

The Oven, the exhibition space, facilitates the arrangement of the drawings that comprise my work due to its circular layout. Each drawing will be positioned in the direction of each of the Citadel's bastions, which determines its orientation. The drawings will be displayed on rails, suggesting that only memory can preserve the tragic events of the Spanish Civil War, preventing them from being "blown away by the wind" like fragile sheets of paper. By making them present, we can prevent further wars in the future.