Agony in the Garden #50 by Luá Ribeira

Agony In The Garden #50 by Lúa Ribeira

Top Boy

This series was made in various cities across the Spanish territory in collaboration with young people involved in the emerging Trap and Drill music scene.

Both genres originated in the United States as an evolution of rap music and have transcended their initial context to become globally influential movements with local scenes emerging across the world (Spain, France, Italy, Australia, Ghana, Sweden, (.))

The music is often recognized for the nihilistic lyrical content and portraying a duality between a precarious life and one of luxury and fame that becomes tangible within the global-digital-online arena. It is the hedonism versus nihilism, the darkness versus joy, the glorification of wealth and banalization of violence that resonate as a response to the values, markets and structures within contemporary society in late capitalism.

In Spain -a country with the highest youth unemployment rate in Europe- drill has become the first cultural boom that is not predominantly white. It is in cities like Madrid, Almeria or Granada where younger generations are exploring the music and the aesthetic of trap and drill and making it their own.

Often represented as apolitical, performative, or superficial, my aim with the work is to read between the lines, to reflect on the emancipatory potential of a mainstream expression of our time and how it relates to the present context of a precarious job market, institutional violence, migratory, financial and environmental crisis.

Embracing a performative collaboration that is integral to my work, I focussed on a series of gestures and landscapes to try and capture an atmosphere, hoping to transcend the idea of subculture and consider its value from a more enrooted perspective.

Edition: 1 of 1

Commissioned by Obscura