Drap Art: International Festival of Recycling Art of Catalonia

BARCELONA Drap Art is a non-profit organization founded in 1995 in Barcelona, dedicated to the promotion of creative recycling through festivals, exhibitions, markets and workshops, in Spain as well as in other countries. Since 2004, Drap Art organizes an important annual event: the International Festival of Recycling Art of Catalonia, hosted every year from mid December to the beginning of January by CCCB (Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona – El Raval – Montalegre, 5).

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Drap Art has become a platform for emerging artists, designers, craftsmen and other creative professionals from Europe and elsewhere who use trash as raw material for their works. It talks about the “3 Rs” (reduce, reuse and recycle) through art and creativity. The habits of dumping should be redirected to the realization that nothing disappears, everything changes. During the 20th and early 21st centuries, characterized by an increasing urbanization and consumerism, waste materials become a recurrent element in some of the most significant artistic movements. Both Dada and Duchamp, as well as Miró and Tapies, incorporate found objects in their works. Similarly, Pop Art, Arte Povera, Fluxus and the Nouveaux Realists, among others, use apparently worthless everyday objects and debris. Drap Art’s mission is to encourage people, especially the younger generations, to use recycling as a resource not only for criticism, but as a tool, available to everyone, to transform protest into positive ideas.

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DRAP ART is a place (espai) to see.

Drap Art Space is in an old coal shop, in a 15th Century building in the Gothic neighborhood of Barcelona, which the association recuperated using natural materials like hidraulic lime instead of cement and reusing everything that was possible.

And this place is much more than an office: there is an exhibition space, specialized in recycled art, where four exhibitions are planned every year and where the artworks of Drap Art’s members are on permanent display, as well as art, design and crafts from all over the world, created from waste materials. Furthermore, workshops are offered and it also has a documentation centre, provided with literature about Art Brut, and recycled art, the social history of trash and other related topics.

DRAP ART is a festival to see.

The International Festival of Recycling Art of Catalonia is held at the CCCB and nearby public spaces from mid December to the beginning of January. Drap Art shows us the possibilities of creative recycling with group exhibitions of art and design objects made from recyclable materials, interventions in public space, a space for thought and discussion, the traditional art & design market, workshops, performances, audiovisuals and environmental cinema. Drap Art looks for a balance between the participation of national and international artists; between emerging and consolidated artists, in order to promote the interchange between countries and generations.