Bàrbara Balcells Matas
BINGO
Bàrbara Balcells Matas (Barcelona, 1990) is a photographer, cultural manager, and communications professional. Her practice focuses on aging, memory, invisible trades, and the esoteric, exploring what is often perceived as ghostly and questioning the ways in which it is concealed. Her work has been exhibited in various festivals and cultural centers, including Photoalicante Festival, Revela-t, Photogenic, and Pati Llimona. She founded Harpo Magazine, a publication dedicated to contemporary analog photography, which has released three print issues. She combines personal projects with professional commissions in the editorial and cultural fields. She is currently developing “Esoterismo laboral”, a project funded by Barcelona Crea (ICUB).
Bàrbara Balcells Matas "BINGO"
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Over the course of a year of visits to a care home for older people, the author gathers stories, routines, and relationships that invite reflection on uprooting, memory, and care. Bingo, as a shared ritual, becomes a symbol of comfort and community.
BINGO
“Our beautiful nest is no longer so, but it will always be in my thoughts.” With these words my grandmother referred to the house where she had lived for more than sixty years. We found them a few days after her death, among the few pages she hadn’t torn from her diary. In those pages she wrote about her decision to move into a care home, where she spent the last months of her life. A decision I didn’t understand, and one that I experienced as a kind of mourning. And yet, “the beautiful nest is no longer so.” That is what my grandmother wrote, and that is what she wanted us to know: spaces are fragile, time undoes them.
In an attempt to understand, I began visiting a care home just one street away from my own house. Gradually, I began to form bonds with the residents and to find my place there. Routines give order to the days: meals, activities, rest. Every Wednesday, bingo gathers most of them in the common room. The calling of numbers, repeated like a ritual, sets the rhythm of a present marked by resignation and, at the same time, offers comfort by creating a shared moment of play. The care home functions as a space of care, but also of isolation, redefining the relationship of those who live there with what they have left behind.
BINGO
“Our beautiful nest is no longer so, but it will always be in my thoughts.” With these words my grandmother referred to the house where she had lived for more than sixty years. We found them a few days after her death, among the few pages she hadn’t torn from her diary. In those pages she wrote about her decision to move into a care home, where she spent the last months of her life. A decision I didn’t understand, and one that I experienced as a kind of mourning. And yet, “the beautiful nest is no longer so.” That is what my grandmother wrote, and that is what she wanted us to know: spaces are fragile, time undoes them.
In an attempt to understand, I began visiting a care home just one street away from my own house. Gradually, I began to form bonds with the residents and to find my place there. Routines give order to the days: meals, activities, rest. Every Wednesday, bingo gathers most of them in the common room. The calling of numbers, repeated like a ritual, sets the rhythm of a present marked by resignation and, at the same time, offers comfort by creating a shared moment of play. The care home functions as a space of care, but also of isolation, redefining the relationship of those who live there with what they have left behind.
"Our beautiful nest is no longer so, but it will always be in my thoughts".
At first, I expected to find in their rooms objects they had brought with them, but in most cases all I found were old photographs pinned to a corkboard. Antonio, 92 years old, is one example: he has little more than a few photos and an old cigar box, and spends his free time tending the plants in the garden. The flowers that bloom thanks to his care frame life within the care home. Likewise, the printed photographs of those same flowers that I gave him, and which he placed around his wedding photo, now decorate his room, preserving that memory.
In conversations with the residents throughout my visits, collected in the form of a diary, the idea of home appears again and again. A place that, over the years, becomes imprecise, yet, as my grandmother wrote, remains always in our thoughts. This project seeks to explore that intangible permanence: how, despite uprooting and the loss of physical spaces, the memory of how we inhabited them accompanies us and offers us shelter.
The project is accompanied by a 36-page A6 format fanzine, containing 19 brief stories and moments lived in the care home.
In conversations with the residents throughout my visits, collected in the form of a diary, the idea of home appears again and again. A place that, over the years, becomes imprecise, yet, as my grandmother wrote, remains always in our thoughts. This project seeks to explore that intangible permanence: how, despite uprooting and the loss of physical spaces, the memory of how we inhabited them accompanies us and offers us shelter.
The project is accompanied by a 36-page A6 format fanzine, containing 19 brief stories and moments lived in the care home.