Thank you. Enjoy your shower Rain according to Miquel Barceló
‘We kindly request you to economise on water because we have to bring it from the village in large cans on our heads. Thank you. Enjoy your shower.’ In his African Diaries, Miquel Barceló transcribes this poster that he saw at the Hotel Fan Dogon on 19 January 1999, on one of his trips to Mali. Ever since his first trip to this country in 1988, Africa became a spiritual reference, impregnating his work from then on. His paintings incorporated a new iconography in which water, that essential element without which there is no life, acquired a recurring presence, with canoes transporting passengers, lagoons, currents and downpours, as in Saison des pluies no. 2 (Rainy Season No. 2). This work, now in the MACBA Collection, is part of a trilogy painted in 1990 (Saison des pluies no. 1, Saison des pluies no. 2 and Le Déluge), which evokes the course of a river during a storm. While the north of Mali is an arid zone where it hardly ever rains, in the south, from late June to early December, the Niger River floods the land, transforming the lives of the inhabitants. Barceló reflects the water’s dynamism by letting it occupy the entire canvas, and adding dramatic raindrops and the presence of animals searching for a place to drink. Painted in grey, white, pink and earthy colours, the work is a celebration of the power of rain and its beneficial virtues.
