Baza

Several years ago, having learned of the festival of the Cascamorras in the town of Baza in Granada province, Frederic Amat decided to witness in person the ancestral celebration, during which a group of young people climb a nearby hill in the mid-afternoon and stain themselves from head to foot with a black ink similar to petroleum tar. Amat, an artist who specializes in stains, did not miss this opportunity to document this manifestation of traditional folklore and anthropological significance. Immersed in the tumult black tar, recording with his camera the ink-stained celebrants, Amat produced a series of images on which later he made subtle interventions with black paint, bringing out a sense of movement, masking a face, or underlining a fleeting trace. The dance of ink with ink is heightened into a striking dialogue of blackened surfaces.