Mattresses of Bilbao // Ismael Iglesias

As a point of intervention, the mattress metaphorically represents a place to drift off; the place where the system tries to lull society to sleep. So I intercept this object and turn it into a banner, spraying ‘wake up’ on one side and ‘dream’ on the other; dream your own dreams and ideas, but also ‘join the fight’. From a legal point of view, the mattress represents a vacuum when it comes to criminal consequences, making it the perfect place to fire gunshots, shoot poison darts, swat, scream, puke and inflict literary wounds; it becomes a medium, a wall, a bulletin board, a journal, a canvas, a cluster of moans, a container of tears and pestilential fragrances, etc. That’s how I saw it: a space to be appropriated within the public space.

Then I began looking for my sources in literature, movies, television series, everyday slang, the internet, social networks (especially Instagram), and even in personal conversations or social expressions. I jot everything down in small notebooks and on my mobile, which helps me remember what to tattoo on each mattress and in each moment. The formula is: spray paint + statement + mattress + write + photograph. The advantage of amputating, cutting up or extracting phrases out of their context is that they usually lose their original meaning and get magnified when written in a such a poetic place as a mattress – a metaphor for dreaming, resting, loving or for loneliness. The fuchsia fluorine colour choice correlates to the idea of defining an identity or a tag – my own personal footprint – that identifies it as part of my project.