There are a lot of elements that define Las Fallas, Valencia’s signature festival, but the most famous are the “esculturas efímeras” — ephemeral statues, the fallas themselves. Every year, hundreds of fallas are created in a citywide act of collective creativity, displayed during the five-day festival, and then burned at the end in la cremà, its own anticipated ritual.
I knew a little about Fallas before I got here, but I couldn’t have anticipated how big, intricate, and lovingly crafted the fallas actually are. Coming from a culture where the pressure to be productive is constant, where we’re always trying to monetize our hobbies and making art for its own sake is considered unserious, it’s shocking to think about putting your all into something that will be destroyed. At the same time, in an era where everything about us is tracked and stored in data centers, the idea of something disappearing entirely has its own mythic allure.
Brian and I were already impressed by the past two weeks of mascletàs, and this week was all about ninots and fallas. Ninots are all of the individual statues that make up a falla, an enormous installation that can take up a whole plaza or block.
We’ve seen fallas in various stages of installation around the city and we went to see the exhibition of ninots in El Museu de les Ciències yesterday. We saw it just in time — the ninots are on display in the museum until March 15, when they’re returned to the casal fallers for the plantà, the reveal of the completed fallas. The fallas are then judged, a winner is declared, and a single ninot is whisked away to the Fallas Museum before the mass burning on March 19.
Walking into the exhibition hall was impressive in and of itself. Hundreds of life-sized ninots and smaller ninots infantils were on display, each vying for your vote. It’s a riot of color and emotion — some pull at your heartstrings, some tell jokes that you may or may not get, some are spooky, sensual, or crass. They’re all so different from each other, but at the same time there seems to be a unifying aesthetic thread that weaves through each of them. I can’t tell if it’s something about the color, the shapes, or maybe just their efímero nature that gives them a kind of Valencian aura — if there’s an art historian or artist reading this, I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Brian noticed five major themes among the ninots:
Sentimental —
Goofy —
Political —
Horny —
and Intellectual Property Law Violations —
I also loved some of the more contemporary-looking ninots, like these:
At the end of the exhibition, we got to vote for our favorite ninot in the hope that it gets spared from the cremà — I think this is the first direct democratic process I’ve ever participated in. Brian and I both voted for Laika:
Fallas starts in earnest on Tuesday, and I can’t wait to see the ninots in their larger installations! From midnight fireworks shows to the flower offerings, parties, music, and explosions, you’ll hear about the festivities here in the next two newsletters.
Song of the Week:
In honor of International Women’s Day, enjoy “La Capacidad” from Colombian-Canadian singer Lido Pimienta. Björk-esque vocals soar over percussion drawn from Pimienta’s Afro-Indigenous Colombian roots in this song about abusive relationships and healing through feminist community and comradeship.