Dibujo Madrid

Every Tuesday for the past 3 years a group of artists have been curating Dibujo Madrid, an awesome performance-illustration platform in Lavapies, Madrid. The event is simple, take a life drawing class, and instead of drawing still models in the nod, draw performance artists making a weird and wonderful show for 2 hours. It’s based at a HUGE autonomous creative space called La Tabacalera (a former tobacco factory) in Lavapies.

I spoke to Lucas Agudelo, a community artist from Columbia and co-founder of the group. He said that they started the sessions as a response to the crisis; it is a platform for creatives to collaborate, to challenge artists, and for creating opportunities, when in general they are dwindling. Last week I went to “Sesión 141. “El mundo al Revés” and it was great! The performers (Lucas being one of them) were wearing “reverse suits”, so it looked like they were standing on their heads. Kind of. This was a response to a poem El Reino del Reves (The Queen of Reverse) by Argentinian poet María Elena Walsh.

For my part, I decide to make paper-collage drawings because I thought it’d be a challenge. And it was. It was a very slow process, which is great for me, because normally I do everything really really fast like a chipmunk on speed. Slowing down and looking at things “al reves” (upsidedown) is good practice for the soul.

AND, in true to Spanish tradition, after the session we went to a local bar and drank cerveza and ate tapas. One guy called Alex collected all the sketchbooks and we had a little show and tell -with rounds of applause and whooping and everything. I’ve never been to such a lively crit!

Find out more on the Dibujo Madrid facebook page.

The second Dibujo event I went to was Dibujo Madrid. Sesión 142. Kick Da Mic – NUEVO DISCO: HIP HOP BATTLE. Which was pretty awesome. A hip-hop battle, with stops in between for drawing.

Another time I went the theme this week was “DESPROGRAMADOS” which was the scene of a battle to save the common man from a post-digital-clockwerk-evil-ring-leader. Some peeps from the group suggested that we should start a Dibujo Bristol. This could be a good idea, except with an english accent it would be di-boo-joe bristol, which sounds funny!

I’ve really enjoyed the freedom in making marks with such a restrictive material as cut-up-bits-of-paper. I shall continue going to the traditional life drawing classes is Bristol, and be that annoying “wacky” person that sits at the back making a big old messy collage. And when I have time, I’ll think about taking Dibujo Madrid up on the suggestion to start a new group, because (despite popular belief) drawing from scenes with narrative is way more exciting than drawing someone in the tod.