PATCHWORK

Co-author: Ruben Gallego "The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning it does not know." Rene Magritte Discovering the limits of what “foreign” meant or was has never been a problem. We are sure that foreign is something we do not know, something we are not part of; even something we are afraid of and that increases our curiosity about the mystery. But beyond that, “foreign” is intimately related to the physical limits, the boundaries of the different nationalities that share the world we live in. Consequently, when someone says he or she is going abroad, we imagine that he or she is travelling to a different country. But what would happen if this concept of “foreign” ignored the physical limitations and unified the cultures of the world? It would then represent the sum of cultures and ideas, all utopias, dystopias and thoughts, all of them being imaginary or real, defined by each of us according to our own knowledge and previous life experiences. What we know defines the unknown and invites us to discover it. This drawing represents the alternative idea of “foreign” as described above, with two main components: the known and the unknown. Both concepts are gathered in the same building, of which we can see one of its facades. This represents the known, with windows that include the characteristics and representative ideas of each of the different cultures. The unknown is inside the building and is sometimes visible through openings that invite the observer to discover it. Because “foreign" has no limits, the building has no beginning or end. The lower part is sunk in the ocean, full of elements out of the imagination; while the upper part surpasses the clouds and hides in them. Through the illustration, the viewer is invited to recognise what he or she already knows, and to discover the unknown in this culture patchwork.