Inaugurated on the Vista Alegre promenade, the photography exhibition Tierra de Sueños, by the "La Caixa" Foundation

The Councilor for Tourism and Deputy Mayor of the City Council of Torrevieja, Rosario Martínez; the Councilor for Culture, Antonio Quesada; the director of the CaixaBank Business Area in Torrevieja, Clara López-Quesada; the delegate of the "la Caixa" Foundation in the Valencian Community, Lourdes Toribio; and Josep Giralt, advisor to the exhibition, today open the Land of Dreams exhibition to the public. Cristina García Rodero, a photographic exhibition that reflects the daily life of the inhabitants of Anantapur, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, one of the poorest areas of India, where the most marginal and vulnerable communities in the country live.

Among its objectives, the "la Caixa" Foundation works so that society can get closer to culture and knowledge. Dissemination is a basic instrument to promote the growth of people, and for this reason the entity works to bring knowledge closer to audiences of all ages and levels of training. Among these cultural activities, the ”la Caixa” Foundation organizes traveling exhibitions in those cities and municipalities that do not have a CaixaForum with the aim of contributing to public awareness through artistic, scientific and social content.

In addition, with its program Arte en la calle, the ”la Caixa” Foundation aims to turn public space into an open-air museum and bring the work of renowned artists closer to the international scene. The Arte en la calle program began in 2006, and since then it has brought the creations of modernity figures such as Auguste Rondín or Henry Moore closer to the public, as well as contemporary artists such as Manolo Valdés, Igor Mitoraj or, more recently, the photographer Brazilian Sebastião Salgado.

Now, the "la Caixa" Foundation presents, together with the Torrevieja City Council, the Land of Dreams exhibition. This exhibition is the fruit of the work carried out jointly by the "la Caixa" Foundation and the Vicente Ferrer Foundation in India to substantially improve the living conditions of the most vulnerable.

Cristina García Rodero was invited to document the living conditions of the Anantapur communities. For a month and a half, García Rodero visited hospitals, shelters for women victims of abuse, workshops, schools and houses, achieving portraits that give voice to those people who are often forgotten: boys and girls, people with disabilities and, especially, women. Mothers, peasant women, seamstresses, brides of different confessions, teachers, nurses and students have a prominent role in this project, representing one of the main drivers of the transformation of the Anantapur communities.

The exhibition delves into the most sensitive and magical aspects of the feminine world and the strength and ability to overcome of the women of Anantapur. The photographer has approached them with reverential respect. Obstinate and excessive, Cristina García Rodero has known how to immerse herself in that world, to melt into the joy and suffering of those who cover up the chiaroscuro of their own existence with color and poise.

The result of the project is 40 snapshots; a torrent of representative images of rural communities in India that captivates with the compositional quality and vividness of its images. From the hand of the photographer Cristina García Rodero we discover the gaze of its people and we enter a landscape that seems suspended in time.

Through his work, García Rodero offers us a particular way of seeing India, a complex and fragmented world. Each photograph builds a coherent and, above all, transcendent visual code. The image that becomes art.

Cristina García Rodero, a revolution in the paradigm of looking

Cristina García Rodero is a guardian figure of universal photography, both for her personality and for the national and international impact of her work. Born in Puertollano (Ciudad Real) in 1949, she graduated in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid. First Spanish woman to enter the prestigious photojournalistic agency Magnum, one of her works is Hidden Spain, which is part of the "la Caixa" Collection of Contemporary Art.

He has received numerous awards, including the World Press Photo 1993, the National Photography Award 1996, FotoPres ”la Caixa” 1997, PhotoEspaña 2000, the Godó Prize for Photojournalism 2000, the gold medals for Merit in Fine Arts 2005 and Castilla- La Mancha 2016, and the PhotoEspaña 2017 award. She is the first Spanish photographer to have her own museum, in her hometown.