Local Cultures, Global Contexts: Redefining Galicia in the 21st Century

The image that illustrates the cover of this issue of ABRIU, «Singularidade» by sculpture artist Alicia Martín, located in the Cidade da Cultura de Galicia in Santiago de Compostela, seems to encapsulate the tensions of contemporary Galician culture: lodged between the local and the global, tradition and modernity, and a site of interaction between public cultural policy and individual agency, neoliberal politics and acts of communal resistance. The artwork was originally part of a collective exhibit of sculptures entitled «Inside» commissioned by the Cidade da Cultura to dialogue with the buildings of the architectural complex, and was singled out to remain as a permanent fixture at the entrance of the Archive of Galicia in the center because of its fitting interaction with the surroundings (Pico). «Singularidade» represents a massive whirlwind of books which suggests both the centrality of language and the excess of information in the information society, resembling a giant compass rose and black hole vortex, readable in any direction as a postmodern sign. The great ball of books evokes a textual globe in a post-textual era, a movable and evolving archive of knowledge, imagination and cultural heritage, as well as an allegorical Aleph reflecting one and all, the individual and the collective, past, present and future. Like many cultural creations of our era, Martín’s sculpture has become a global tourist object: a photographable urban landscape against the reflective glass of the building, where visitors visually in-