Paiporta, Memòria del Fang

Paiporta, Memòria del Fang: Anniversary of the DANA of October 29th, 2024, Valencia 

In the current context of climate emergency, extreme weather events are intensifying and seriously affecting territories and communities. On October 29th, 2024, an exceptionally intense cold drop hit Valencia, causing torrential flooding that struck the region of l'Horta Sud with particular violence. The disaster left behind incalculable material devastation and the irreparable loss of 229 lives. From this direct experience, Paiporta, memòria del fang (Paiporta, memory of the mud) was conceived, an exhibition that turns mud into a sensitive archive, a silent denunciation and embodied memory.

The artist Lluci Juan, who has emotional and professional ties to Paiporta, collected the silt deposited by the flood, preserving in it the footprints of the rescue dogs that searched for bodies among the rubble. These marks, imprinted in the mud, become pieces laden with meaning: not only do they document what happened, but they also embody the human dimension of the disaster and the efforts to find the missing persons. Each work is a way of remembering, of sustaining the pain and of activating memory from the body and the territory.

Coinciding with the anniversary of the DANA, the exhibition space will be activated as a place of living memory with a collective reading of real testimonies of this tragedy until 8:11 p.m., the time when the victims received the alert on their mobile phones, when many of them had already died. The action activates collective memory through presence, interruption and listening, turning art into a tool for care, justice and resistance.