Drap-Art, 30 years imagining a sustainable future through art

In 2026, Drap-Art reaches an exceptional milestone: three decades of uninterrupted activity as a pioneering project in sustainable art, social transformation and cultural creation. Founded in Barcelona in 1995, the association has been one of the first to defend, from an artistic practice, the reuse of materials, ecological awareness and citizen participation as tools for change. Thirty years later, that initial impulse has become an international reference capable of articulating art, activism and sustainability in the same meeting space.

Throughout this journey, Drap-Art has gone from an almost intuitive first experience to consolidating itself as a cultural circuit with global projection. The festival has been present in more than 16 countries, has brought together a hundred artists in each edition, has exhibited more than 5,000 works and has activated a network of collaborations with more than ten heritage spaces in Barcelona. Its trajectory not only explains the evolution of a festival, but also the construction of an artistic community that has known how to make sustainability an aesthetic, critical and shared language.

For Tanja Grass, director and founder of the project, the strength of Drap-Art lies in its fidelity to an idea that has remained intact since the beginning: “Since its birth, Drap-Art has defended the same idea: art as a tool for social transformation.” What began as a collective intuition, she explains, has transformed into an international community that demonstrates that creativity and sustainability can generate new imaginaries for the city and the world, placing itself within a global movement that is increasingly relevant in contemporary art.

This 30th anniversary comes at a particularly significant time. In a context marked by environmental and social crisis, Drap-Art claims the role of sustainable art as a space of resistance, awareness and imagination. The anniversary not only invites us to review the path we have taken, but also to ask ourselves what role creative practices can play today in the construction of other forms of life, production and relationship with the environment.

One of the great milestones of this celebration will be the presentation, on September 15, 2026 at the Mirador del CCCB, of the book Drap-Aires: Històries del Festival Drap-Art . The publication collects the visual, documentary and human memory of the festival and is considered a key piece to preserve the spirit of a project that has left its mark on several generations of artists, collaborators and audiences.

The volume has been built from a selection of previously unpublished materials, testimonies and images that trace the trajectory of the festival since its beginnings. The archival photographs of Consuelo Bautista —who has accompanied Drap-Art since 1996 with a gaze capable of capturing the energy of the spaces and people who have given life to the project— dialogue with the texts of Xavier Theros, writer, cultural chronicler and former member of Accidentes Polipoètics. His contribution offers a literary, critical and close reading of the stories, anecdotes and episodes that have marked the evolution of the festival. The result is a choral story that preserves the collective memory of Drap-Art and allows us to revisit three decades of creation, city and social transformation.

"This publication is born from the need to preserve the memory of the festival and to recognize all the people who have been part of it. It is a collective tribute. A piece that allows us to understand where we come from and where we want to go," says Grass. The director also emphasizes that the book is a way of reaffirming Drap-Art's commitment to sustainable creation, not only as an artistic practice, but as a form of thought and cultural action.

The celebration will continue in December with a particularly significant 2026 edition of the International Sustainable Art Festival of Catalonia. From 17 to 21 December, Drap-Art will once again be held in various spaces and heritage sites in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, expanding its conceptual and programmatic scope. The exhibition of works selected through the open call —one of the festival's central modalities— will be presented at the Centre d'Artesania Catalunya, reaffirming the link between contemporary creation, territory and heritage.

The programming of this edition will bring together proposals for painting, sculpture, photography and mixed media, as well as installations, urban interventions, performances, live formats, audiovisuals and other contemporary practices. In addition, the festival will reinforce its participatory dimension with workshops, co-creations, talks and spaces for reflection, consolidating itself as a place of dialogue between artists, communities and the city.