treinta

When Xirou turned thirty he asked Laura to take photographs, images that would keep that time. For a year, as long as it took Laura to turn the same age, they got together to talk, take pictures, think out loud, discuss and play. Xirou Xiao and Laura C. Vela created a small universe that gradually filled with photographs, drawings, letters, intervened documents and fragments of life. Thus was born thirty, as a result of this exchange in which both explored and confronted their doubts about growth, family, representation and the body. The pages of treinta compose a treasure box, as reflections and testimonies of their relationship, their daily fears and their discoveries, from the joy of finding the perfect avocado, the most intense poem or the most beautiful light to the sensation of being observed through a camera, the disappointments and the inability to answer, without doubts, the question of who you are.

treinta is a proposal that suggests that the work of the close and intimate, rather than a self-absorption, proposes the construction of a community and a sensibility towards the other.
towards the other. From the cover paper to the drawings chosen to illustrate it, underbau's design proposal seeks to delve into the emotions shared by the authors, with whom they have built a relationship over the years. To differentiate the voices of the authors, they proposed that Xirou's texts should always be at the top and Laura's at the bottom, a position that is already established on the cover. As the sequence progresses, one discovers who is who through the references they make to each other. thirty is an exercise in revision, but it is also the latent emotion of an era. In addition, Juanjo and Pablo, responsible for underbau, propose the same format of Como la casa mía (Dalpine, 2019) of 16.2×23.5cm to continue the collection of works that unites Xirou and Laura, using this time a cherry-colored stamping to highlight the cover illustrations, which are footprints, paths, tattoos and scars.