La Casa Amarilla opened its doors on May 15, 2015, in the former headquarters of the Cabildo de Lanzarote, with a clear mission: to create a public exhibition space to disseminate knowledge and memory of the island from its multiple layers. Ten years later, it can be said that it has fulfilled its purpose: almost 100,000 people have visited its exhibitions, many of them tourists who have found there a version of the island that is not usually in tourist brochures.
A decade of exhibitions with their own face
In total, 24 exhibitions promoted or supported by the Island Council that have covered topics ranging from traditional architecture to the invisibility of women in history, from Carnival rituals to the invisible landscapes of water or the postcard. Each of them has been a visual essay, a collective story woven from photographs, objects, archives, voices and silences. In addition, the Cabildo has opted for local mediation: historians, artists, curators, collectives and educational centers have actively participated in the exhibition projects.
The first exhibition, Lanzarote through glass (2015) rescued the pioneering gaze of photographer Jacinto Alonso at the beginning of the last century. It was followed by Landscape on Celluloid (2016), which explored the films shot on the island since the 1960s, and Lanzarote and the Postcard (2016-17), which reconstructed the tourist imaginary of the 20th century.
But the Casa Amarilla was not limited to nostalgia. In Memories of Water (2018), the milestone of the arrival of the desalination plant was addressed; in Buches y Diabletes (2019), Benito Cabrera gave prominence back to traditional carnivals; and in Sombrera (2020-21), curated by Arminda Arteta and Vanessa Rodríguez, the rural and coastal women of Lanzarote were made visible, with a great response from the public.
The last years have been especially fruitful and we had the presence of the late photographer Javier Reyes and his Mirada Artesana. Between 2022 and 2024, exhibitions such as Eco al Planeta, Presente Futurible, made by the Pancho Lasso Art School, or Diálogo de postales have shown a clear contemporary vocation, connecting the identity of the island with the challenges of the 21st century, or with the Atlantic world, as the exhibition Las Puertas de la Macaronesia did. Even death has visited the Casa Amarilla, thanks to the Memento Mori exhibition.
The voice of the land of Los Campesinos, Contra el Olvido by Santiago Alemán, Vestir la ropa blanca, Las Revoltosas and several editions of the Art Biennial organized by the MIAC have completed the group of exhibitions hosted in the halls of the Casa Amarilla.
Memory and knowledge as an act of resistance
But not everything has been easy. The project has gone through its own uncertainties and these ten years of the Casa Amarilla have not been without difficulties and, of course, there is room for improvement. These are pending challenges: the conservation of the building itself, which in a few years will be a century old since its construction, its accessibility and its sustainable management, with the invaluable collaboration of the Art, Culture and Tourism Centers.
What role does a space like this play in the 21st century, when artificial intelligence is beginning to rewrite reality in real time and oblivion seems programmed into our devices? Collective memory is a construction, and for a community, remembering is not a passive activity, but a form of resistance to the amnesia induced by the speed of the present.
In a world oversaturated with images and stimuli, the Casa Amarilla proposes something else: to stop, observe, remember. What remains of the island we were? What future do we want to build? How does Lanzarote connect with the rest of the world? What role do women, young people, the margins play?
It is no coincidence that the 2025 program includes an exhibition entitled "Ten books for an island": if we had to save something before the shipwreck, what stories would we choose?
The history of Lanzarote will be, in part, the history of how it took care of its places of memory.
