Cuando Robert encontró a Noëlle y vicebersa

I could start with “When Robert met Noëlle” or “When Noëlle met Robert”…
That was in 1992, but I've already told you. ever told

1993, Marie-Noëlle
Es Puig de San Pere, Palma de Mallorca
Photo by Robert L. Hinton

I was a weaver, Robert came from the tourism industry. We were already in our thirties, neither of us were working at the time and we were completely confused and disoriented about what we wanted to do with our lives.
Would it be too cheesy to say that we were two forlorn souls? I guess so.

1992, Robert Lopez Hinton
Exhibition of street photography from Palma de Mallorca and Madrid

1994, Robert posing as a posh junk dealer in an abandoned factory in Mª de la Salud
Genius and figure!!
Photo by Marie-Noëlle Ginard

1994, Marie-Noëlle next to an abandoned factory in Maria de la Salut
Photo by Robert Lopez Hinton

Looking at our first photos, with those somewhat theatrical and rather bohemian stagings, you might say that we were “poseurs”, but I assure you that we were not.
It was something like: “let's grab an old bike that we found on the street, a couple of old watches from the flea market and we'll go to the entrance of this barbershop and then we'll go have a few beers” – just like that, straight through, I don't know if I'm explaining myself.
Or: “This morning I feel like taking some photos next to the chimney of the abandoned factory in María de la Salut, loading a few things into the car and off we go.”
More than twenty years later, you might think that the photos were taken by someone else, but they are self-portraits; we showed them to many people and they passed from hand to hand, but absolutely no one saw them, not even us; we have only just rediscovered them now because we didn't have the money to print them back then.

1993, Marie-Noëlle knitting
San felio street in Palma de Mallorca

1993, Gypsy in front of the portal of the church of San Miguel in Palma
Photo by Robert Lopez Hinton

We were two lost souls in search of our own identity; fortunately, Robert and I, in our own search, found each other and embarked on a path together that would take us from antiques to decoration, from decoration to restoration, passing through painting and always accompanied by photography. And on this journey we came across culture and art. But without a doubt the connecting link was the creativity that emerged in each of our activities.
The first few years together we lived in Palma de Mallorca and in María de la Salut. In 1997 we settled in Pollensa where we opened a decoration shop called Pollentia. These were years of learning and getting to know materials: wood, paint, terracotta, textiles; living surrounded by antiques, old houses – so organic, material and natural – was also a way of apprehending beauty. Our gaze became accustomed to it and our perspective ended up being different from that of others.

Madrid, photo by Robert López Hinton

“He looks at life through a camera but he is not a photographer; he loves old buildings but he is not an architect;
He creates magical and surprising spaces but he is not a decorator; he wants to live surrounded by beauty and expression but he is not an artist… he is Robert López Hinton, genius and figure.” (text: Noëlle)

2005, Marie-Noëlle Ginard
Exhibition at the MJC gallery in Neuilly sur Seine, Paris

The real explosion of creativity would come with Can Monroig

We bought the house, Can Monroig, in 2002, its transformation would take us several years, but it was an exercise in beauty, work, learning, feeling, knowledge, diligence, tenacity, applied arts, intuition... but above all a liberation, since it allowed us to be ourselves professionally and creatively speaking.
Although we moved to live in Can Monroig when the house was still under construction, we kept the shop in Pollensa until 2007. We finished the restoration of the house in 2010, a year in which, as you will remember, we were already in the midst of a crisis and we left our “comfort zone” with a single kick.
And this is when I can firmly state that creativity is the best stimulant in a time of economic or personal crisis.
We reinvented ourselves in terms of decoration. The antiques, perhaps too serious and heavy for Can Monroig, produced a sombre and excessively respectable effect. This house called for something more daring, for there to be a contrast between the medieval architecture of the building and the interior design; that is how the naughty furniture and a different decorative concept arose, where we combined, for example, graffitied furniture with virgins and baroque painting, that is, the “Classic naughty” style.

Le corbussier model graffitied by Marie-Noëlle

On the other hand, fear, insecurity or loss of self-esteem, among many other ailments, provoked in me the need to express how I felt at that moment. From there, in 2009, the series “Men and snakes” and the “crucified meninas” emerged, a series of dolls, madelman and actionmen painted and almost always crucified that populated Can Monroig to the disgust or surprise of many of our visitors.

2010, “Men and Snakes”
Acrylic on panel by Marie-Noélle Ginard

2010, Menina crucified by Marie-Noëlle Ginard

At a cultural and artistic level we organize numerous exhibitions, concerts, theater, etc. (see more)
In some cases with daring proposals of a social nature such as Herbert Hundrich's performance “Economic Tsunami in Progress” at Incart 2012 where we actively participated.

2012, Incart in Can Monroig
The performance “Economic Tsunami in Progress” by artist Herbert Hundrich took on a life of its own when we laid the neighborhood children down on the silhouettes painted by the artist.

2012, Incart in Can Monroig
Marie-Noëlle presented a series of crucified dolls with their mouths covered in allusion to the socio-economic situation of the time.
At Incart 2013 we would return to this image through the photographs of Biel Grimalt who portrayed people with their mouths gagged.
Photo by Pep Toni Ginard

2012, Marie-Noëlle Ginard among her meninas
Photo by Biel Grimalt

Lost in Cameroon

At the end of 2012 we left for Africa for work reasons, the economic and work situation in Mallorca was very complicated for us.
We arrived in Cameroon practically without money - we have told this more than once in private but never in public - we were in an area of the African country where the two of us were practically the only white people and it was not a tourist area for rich Europeans. The shock was brutal, Robert did not stop taking photos - with his mobile phone and without being seen - so as not to forget the details of what he was experiencing. Some will call it photo reportage, I call it creativity on the surface as a reaction to the anguish that the situation - our own and others' - was causing us.(see photos)

2012, Cameroon
Photo by Robert Lopez Hinton

2012, Cameroon
Photo by Robert Lopez Hinton

After a few months of stay in Cameroon the project It didn't work out and we returned to Mallorca quite changed.
Can Monroig was waiting for us and we decided to continue fighting to make ourselves known: cultural events, concerts, theatre... and we went in search of some professional outlet within decoration and restoration that would not come until 2014.

Incart 2013 By Can Monroig (Economic Tsunami in Progress II), a before and after

In the Incart 2013 edition Can Monroig participated with the proposal “Economic Tsunami II” where we took up the name of Herbert Hundrich's performance from the previous year; the theme was still social and we invited several artists, including Herbert and the photographer Biel Grimalt, to exhibit in the windows of closed shops in the centre of Inca.
The idea that we worked on with Biel Grimalt had its origin in the “crucified meninas” with their mouths covered that I had presented in the previous edition of Incart, but using photography and in a giant poster format similar to the French photographer JR,
Robert and I set up the installation inside our house “What is silver?” – Money is of no importance, said by an African, and in an ironic tone, of course.
The starting point was a doll we saw in Yaoundé.

“While in Cameroon we came across this doll.
Roberto thought it looked a lot like mine and suggested I buy it.
I didn't want to; if we paid for it, the girl who owned it surely wouldn't have another one.
“From this photo arose our proposal for the “economic tsunami” at Incart 2013.”

Installation by Robert and Noëlle
Economic Tsunami in Progress II
Can Monroig
Incart 2013

Incart 2013
Gagged Menina by Marie-Noëlle Ginard

Incart 2013 By Can Monroig represented a before and after for different reasons.
For Robert and me it was a way of expressing what we had experienced in Africa, as well as the difficulties and fears we had gone through in recent years in Mallorca.
We put a lot of energy into putting on the exhibitions, and a lot of ourselves too, as we got emotionally involved. I guess we took things too seriously; or maybe we were crying out for someone to help us - ironically, the dolls had their mouths covered. When you work or collaborate with other people you want their level of involvement to be the same as yours, but there were disagreements with the artists and snubs from the Inca city council; so we decided not to participate in the following editions of Incart and that from that moment on we would develop our own ideas alone... or at least for a while.
We are currently going through a somewhat calmer moment and have started a creative project “it's just paint” together with the artist Manuel Santiago, who we will tell you about later.

Noëlle in the workshop we improvised in Can Monroig to work with Manuel Santiago