History

In 2019, Drap-Art returned to Pittsburgh in collaboration with Ocean Sole, a Kenyan non-profit organization that uses art made from discarded flip-flops to raise awareness and fight ocean pollution. Among the colorful animal series in this exhibition were four life-sized giraffe statues. Masai Jonathan Lenato, an emerging Kenyan artist working with Ocean Sole, traveled to Pittsburgh to help install the pieces alongside Drap-Art. The colorful rhinoceros statue quickly became a crowd favorite, as its constantly changing location encouraged visitors to engage in a treasure hunt-like activity.

In 2017, Drap-Art was invited by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust to participate in the Three Rivers Arts Festival, in collaboration with the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. Francisco de Pájaro, whose artistic name is Art is Trash, created several urban art installations for this exhibition alongside artists such as Ron Copeland, Sarika Goulatia, and Ryder Henry, among others.

Drap-Art’s debut in Argentina was in collaboration with Ecomanía and Analía Flores. Edgardo Rodríguez and other artists organized a collective exhibition, workshops, and a recycled street band. This exhibition also featured performances by Circ Reciclat and screenings of environmental films. Drap-Art continues to present an annual exhibition in Buenos Aires.

In collaboration with Claudia Calace, Drap-Art organized a festival in Atlántida, Uruguay, celebrating adaptive reuse. The activities included a live art creation marathon using found materials, an art exhibition, a slow fashion show, a series of conferences, and live music.

The birth of an ongoing collaboration with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership began with Drap-Art’s exhibition at the 2016 Re:NEW Festival. It was a significant international collaboration, featuring works by more than 60 Catalan, Spanish, European, American, and Chinese artists, displayed in the beautiful Wintergarden at PPG Place.

The Re:NEW Festival is a celebration of a city’s progression, material transformation, creative repurposing, and sustainability.

This festival hosted a variety of artists and activities related to creative recycling, including an art exhibition, a slow fashion show, recycling workshops, music performances, conferences, and a 24-hour creative marathon, where artists and designers created live artworks using discarded materials. The festival was held with the support of Claudia Calace.

In 2012, Drap-Art launched a collaborative exhibition with four European non-profit organizations: Kunst-Stoffe, Cultural Labor Social Cooperation Pecs, Posidonia Festival, and Les Amis du Vent Calvi. The goal was to create a network of European organizations dedicated to creative reuse.

The exhibition tour began in Berlin, Germany, and continued through Carloforte, Italy; Pécs, Hungary; Barcelona, Spain; and Calvi, France, showcasing the work of four local artists from each visited country.

After the success of the 2011 traveling exhibition across China, Drap-Art continued to Tokyo the following winter, in collaboration with the Instituto Cervantes in Tokyo. Drap-Art worked with 22 artists from Barcelona and Japanese artists Rina Ota, Kiomei Logic, and Takuo Yamada.

Maintaining the idea that “nothing disappears, everything transforms”, Drap-Art was invited to organize a traveling exhibition in China, commissioned by the Instituto Cervantes in Beijing. Drap-Art brought 24 artists from Barcelona and collaborated with local artists in each city for this exhibition.

In 1998, Drap-Art was invited to organize a festival of artistic and cultural exchange between Israeli, Catalan, and Palestinian artists, with the goal of using art to foster a deeper understanding between the Palestinian and Jewish communities. Following the theme conceived by artist Flo Guerín, “Tell me what you throw away, and I’ll tell you who you are”, the artists worked with found materials collected from various neighborhoods: a poor neighborhood, a wealthy neighborhood, a secular neighborhood, a religious neighborhood, and from the Gaza Strip.

In 1997, the Prince of Montenegro invited Drap-Art to develop an exhibition that encouraged reflection, facilitated cultural exchange, and inspired hope through the recycling of materials destroyed by the Balkan wars. Montenegrin and Barcelona-based artists worked together to create colorful, everyday objects from these materials, invoking a sense of return to normalcy. The Recykl Art Fest in Montenegro was conceived and coordinated by Lufe Lopes. This workshop later inspired the workshop in Israel and the Evil Empire exhibition.