OBRA NUEVA — Ce qui reste

In Spanish, the word obra refers both to an artist’s creation and to the construction of a building. This project stems from that dual meaning: a work created from the remnants of other works.

In the Toulouse train station neighborhood, marked by demolitions, abandoned buildings, squats, and new real estate developments, Ernesto Artillo wonders what might be sacred in a place like this. The answer lies not in the extraordinary, but in what has sustained communal life: fragments of homes, foundations, walls, floors, facades, and interiors that remind us that every city, before being an urban project, is a shared way of sustaining life.

In a present where the destruction of buildings, even in contexts of war, can become an extreme form of erasing memory, displacing bodies, and imposing narratives, these ruins take on a broader symbolic dimension. What is usually removed or discarded appears here as the principle of a new form. In these fragments, those who built, lived, demolished, and preserved intersect with those who, today, are rebuilding the neighborhood, opening the artist’s work to a construction imbued with lives past and yet to come.

OBRA NUEVA — What Remains acknowledges the tensions of the present—instability, the need for refuge, and the desire for a future—and embraces what remains as a new source of hope in which to reflect, restoring to the neighborhood a form situated between rubble and altar, between loss and construction. A space to ask what remains when everything changes, and what shared foundation can still support what is to come.

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- A publication documenting the work’s creation process will be produced in collaboration with MACLE, a multidisciplinary research and creation studio active in the fields of architecture, heritage, landscape, and craftsmanship.

- Friday 29 May, 9:00 PM : Unveiling of the sculpture with a performance accompanied by a neighborhood choir.

With the support of Europolia – Grand Matabiau quais d'Oc, FP01 Architects, SEG-FAYAT, and the collaboration ofMBC Toulouse - Matériaux Biosourcés de Construction, Premys, TESS (Tom Gray et Simon Aubry), Gustave Ingénieur du bois, Alpes Contrôles, metamo, Atelier Dauphin, Locaforce.

This project is partially supported by a grant from Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) as part of the Programme for the Internationalisation of Spanish Culture (PICE).

With the support of Caisse des Dépôts, main sponsor.