Les demeures premières

Antonio Gallego, known in the 1980s through his involvement in the bold billposting interventions of the Banlieue-Banlieue  group in Paris, embarked in 1996 on a photo series entitled Les demeures premières – a work concerned with the first forms of housing and construction. It is a project that has taken him on numerous trips, ranging from Mongolia in 1998 to Arctic Siberia for the 4th Yakut Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2016. The resulting screen-prints, showing tree houses, underground refuges, yurts and tepees, are then posted on walls in urban spaces. Other featured structures include this borie, a type of drystone construction found mainly in the south of France, which once served as a shelter for villagers. Gallego’s works portray a wide variety of dwellings, customs and ways of life. As urban interventions, they stand in striking contrast to the uniform architecture of the modern city.

Antonio Gallego / Jeanette Dittmar