Bienal de Pontevedra

In September 2014, after a trip to Auschwitz, Norberto Olmedo decided to start working on a project to reflect on the fragility of humanity and how, despite everything, it is possible to fight for a fairer world. The series refers to Stalin's regime in the USSR, which was a brutal oppression of freedom and individual identity, where any voices contrary to the official ideology were repressed. Collectivisation and gulags, forced labour camps, were used to subjugate the population and exploit their natural resources. From 1929 until Stalin's death, in 1953, millions of people were arrested and forced to work in inhumane conditions, resulting in approximately 18 million prisoners, of which 6 million were sent to Siberia. At that time, Stalin was also responsible for the Ukrainian famine (Holodomor), which caused millions of deaths. The portraits seek to pay homage to the anonymous hero and, at the same time, to denounce a past that witnessed the greatest crimes of the 20th century. His intention is to show, in each of these faces, a violated, assaulted and exterminated innocence. Recovering the memory of some of them helps us to reconcile with ourselves and reflect on the miseries of the human condition.