El Carpio, in Cordoba, Big Donkey’s new home

-The “Burro Grande” or Big Donkey, a public sculpture created by Fernando Sánchez Castillo for La noche en blanco, will travel to the town of El Carpio in the province of Cordoba.

- The jury, consisting of the work’s author, Fernando Sánchez Castillo, the guest curator of La noche en blanco, Rafael Doctor, the curator and art critic Octavio Zaya, and the director of La noche en blanco, Pablo Berástegui, was particularly impressed by El Carpio’s constant commitment to contemporary art and with the site chosen to display the piece.

- The sculpture will be removed from its current location in Atocha this very day to begin its journey to Cordoba.  

Madrid, 4 September 2009

Burro Grande (Big Donkey), the sculpture created by Fernando Sánchez Castillo for La noche en blanco 2009, leaves its current location in Atocha today on the way to its new home in El Carpio, Cordoba, in accordance with the jury’s decision. As its members pointed out, “Over the years, El Carpio has shown a strong commitment to contemporary art despite its limited resources, and the town offers an ideal location for this sculpture.” The donkey will be placed alongside a highway interchange where the A-4 freeway passes through the lands owned by the Ducal House of Alba. 

The town, situated about 30 kilometers from the city of Cordoba, has just over 4,000 inhabitants. Since 2002, it has hosted a program of artistic interventions in the natural and urban landscape known as “Scarpia”, and the event’s various editions have boasted the participation of artists such as Daniel Canogar, Maider López, Rogelio López Cuenca and Fernando Sánchez Castillo himself. Moreover, El Carpio has plans to create a public art archive center, and next year’s edition of “Scarpia” will be called “Art: Flora and Fauna”. El Carpio has also proved that “its inhabitants have a special bond with the donkey, a bond of affection but also one of nostalgia for this faithful working companion used by many of the people who live in the town today,” in the words of the organizers. In addition, the Cordovan donkey is currently one of the region’s few native species in danger of extinction.

Fernando Sánchez Castillo, whose works often reinterpret Spanish history and symbols, has commented on more than one occasion that, “unlike other Spanish animal-symbols such as the bull or the horse, the donkey represents the everyday lives of simple folk, hard work and perseverance.”