Joel Jimenez Jara (Costa Rica / Spain)
The river is a loom, the thread is a mountain
In the late 19th century, textile colonies emerged along the Llobregat River in Catalonia. These self-contained communities integrated factories, worker housing, and communal amenities, forming microcosms of industrial life.
Operating under a paternalistic system, they offered low-cost welfare in exchange for exploited labor and restricted freedoms. The perceived benefits of this dynamic cultivated obedience and compliance among workers and their families, reinforcing structures of control.
By the 1970s, the decline of the textile industry left these colonies in crisis. Factories fell silent, infrastructures collapsed, and once-thriving communities became spectral remnants of their industrial past.
“The river is a loom, the thread is a mountain” examines the layered histories embedded in these landscapes, developing a symbolic archaeology that uncovers traces of power, hierarchy, and class.
Through the deconstruction and reinterpretation of archival images as textile patterns, the project interweaves visual and material elements from these spaces. By integrating historical imagery into the framework of textile production, the work reflects the systemic structures of power that shaped these colonies, linking the repetitive, disciplined labor of their inhabitants to the lasting imprints of exploitation.
Weaving the fragmented archive into textile patterns also challenges the notion of the archive as a fixed, immutable record. Instead, it reveals its constructed nature and the ways in which it actively shapes the narratives that define our understanding of history.
By juxtaposing the residues of industrialization with the enduring presence of nature, the work explores how the identity of these colonies is shaped by the tension between past and present, fact and fiction. The landscape’s anachronistic quality further invites a reflection on the interplay between historical and mythological narratives, revealing how collective memory is continually rewritten.
Joel Jimenez (b. 1993, Costa Rica) is an artist and filmmaker based in Madrid, Spain. Working across photography, installation, and moving image, his practice examines the politics of memory and the ways power and ideology are inscribed in space. Through research-based projects, he explores landscapes, architectures, and archives as carriers of shared histories, engaging with themes of erasure, displacement, and the instability of historical narratives. His work often moves between documentation and speculation, bringing together archival materials, environmental observation, and mythological references, with a growing focus on non-human forms of memory and communication.
