Opening up, uniting, and acting Understanding moves us

This exhibition is part of 'Harrotu Ileak', a Tabakalera mediation project that drives collaboration between artists and young newcomers to our city. Since its creation in 2017, every Friday ‘Harrotu lleak’ provides a meeting, creation, and debate space every Friday for young people living in precarious and vulnerable situations that has become a benchmark for the community.

Over the last six years, ‘Harrotu Ileak’ has developed creation processes that have helped its participants address topics that affect them directly, including questions of social justice in the public sphere, while calling stereotypes and stigmas into question.

Opening up, uniting, and acting. Understanding moves us is a photography exhibition that presents work created in recent months by young ‘Harrotu Ileak’ participants in collaboration with artists Javi Julio, Lua Ribeira, and Nagore Legarreta. 

The photographs shown provide a portrait of the majority of these individuals’ lived experience. Through the presentation of our participants’ portraits, we are able to better understand their personal journeys and stories. Included are their place of origin and families as a point of departure that symbolises a temporary space that they have left behind, and the journey to get here as a transitional space in the search for a different life.

The images also show their new realities in San Sebastian, which are marked by new friendships and routines that touch on looking for work, different training programmes, and their afternoons at Tabakalera.

All of the photographs have been created through exercises proposed by the artists, with the exhibition’s approach being crafted by Nagore Legarreta.

• Text in Arabic.