Vicinay 002 and Vicinay 007 are two pieces that were part of the Link (2018) project by Aitor Ortiz, which invokes Bilbao’s industrial past. Each of them is comprised of steel panels taken from the floor of the Vicinay nautical chain factory in the Basque Country. These pieces, chosen by the artist, evoke the activity and memory of this factory, which used to be close to the artist’s workshop and is now destroyed, as is palpable through the deformations and creases caused by years of pulling these chains for cargo vessels. They also harbour a kind of echo of photography, since the look of the steel is somehow reminiscent of silver bromide. Indeed, the Link project also began with taking photographs of the factory, but it ended up veering towards extracting part of the floor.

To Ortiz, “the works resulting from this project restored the factory’s link with society, which is visible in the deformations and creases caused by thousands of tonnes of chains being dragged along the plant’s original steel floors for over 60 years, as a metaphor of its activity”.

This project was undertaken with the 2017 Leonardo Grant for Cultural Researchers and Creators awarded by the BBVA Foundation. Both pieces were acquired by the Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson at the Max Estrella Gallery stand at ARCO 2019.