MARISA GONZÁLEZ
"Female open space invaders"

This work is a dialogue on the urban labyrinth of Hong Kong, between its ordinary and unusual use of public holidays in one of the most emblematic cities of the Asian world of commerce and finance. The centre of this city is absolutely transformed by the invasion of 120.000 Philippine women who work there for a short period in the domestic service. It is the biggest immigrant community.

These women settle down and invade the city in their holidays, creating new functions, in a parallel world, they have generated a new way of perceiving the urban space different from the use for which was created. The space is changed into a new urban, human and social cartography.

There are different codes during the working days and the public holidays. These codes are established by them and the people from the place have to accept them. They use the city as an absolutely own and different way, they bring their traditions, habits and beliefs to the city.

It is a pilgrimage in space and time. A territory that was created with specific town-palling goals is rebuild, reoriented and transformed by them in a small city, “as a village square”, in a meeting point, in their own territory.

They have created an exodus of outlying districts, imposing their culture, separating their traditions, creating new ways of use, delimitating their own territory. They turn this foreign territory into their own territory, even if it doesn’t belong to them.

They transform the commercial and finance centre, the squares and parks changing their meanings and functions and they turn them into domestic spaces where they settled down, they build their little one day living quarters in which they communicate, rest, laugh, dance, play, eat and pray in the main streets and in the most important buildings as it is the Foster’s Hong Kong Bank.

This exhibition consists of photography that registers and recreates the spaces generated by this women crowd, and a part of a documentary video “Ellas filipinas” which will be shown soon in different art festivals.

                                                                                                           June de 2010