The Scars of Living, Girona Townhouse

Rescued from ruin by architect Anna Noguera, Girona Townhouse in Spain highlights the ancient beauty of the 16th-century townhouse with a skillful and subtle restoration. With every detail carefully designed, the art dressing the stone walls in the master bedroom is as meaningful as the restoration itself.

Conceived by Barcelona-based artist Mònica Sans Carré, this particular piece was chosen because of the shape of the two frames, one vertical and one horizontal, which visually fill the large stone wall in the master bedroom. It also happens to be the perfect place because of the indirect light it receives, accentuating the delicacy of the paper and creating contrast between that and the drawings in the collage intervention. This warm light frames the raspberry red color of the artwork.

“From the beginning Anna and I saw that the pieces were perfectly integrated into the space creating a welcoming and cosy light,” explains Monica, “as if it had been created for the bedroom!”

We were delighted to learn the artist’s vision on this very interesting piece:

“My work focuses on the strength of human vulnerability,” she says. “The materials are as fragile as sloughed skin. The skin is the boundary between the innermost self – the intimate world – and the external – the public persona. Drawings, monotypes, letters and stitching are the tracks and traces of identity, memory and trauma. Shared thoughts that belong to no-one.

“Reds are the protagonists, purifiers and transformers. Whites are void yet solid at the same time. Everything is on the point of breaking… When it breaks, it leaves an open wound. Sewn up, it heals. The scars of living.”

“I use make-up to hide and protect the intimate or to seduce. I catch, catalogue and manipulate the exterior world with images – from newspapers, magazines, cinema, myths, and fables – to create new relationships of hope. My ethical and artistic aim is to share these areas of empathy. To create narrative and poetic pulses between these spaces of osmosis, which create bonds of affinity and healing between the self and others.”

To visit the Girona Townhouse and see Mònica Sans Carré’s work up close, click here.