Joan Pallé Spain, b. 1989
The work Reverse Cowgirl was produced for the exhibition Els Joves infeliços (The Unhappy Youth), presented at the La Panera Art Center in Lleida in January 2026. The project reflected on youth, hopelessness, the construction of one's own identity, and the inability to belong.
Reverse cowgirl presents a replica of a Volkswagen Golf GTI, the first car the artist drove at nineteen. This autobiographical reference connects to the artist's adolescence and youth in Lleida, a peripheral city closely tied to the rural world, marked by a certain distance from major urban and cultural centers. The car thus appears as a space for escape and identity construction, linked to the search for experiences, intensity, and autonomy.
At the same time, the work refers to the figure of the young person as a precarious subject, without a place of their own or a stable position from which to project themselves into the future, but who retains the energy, drive, and audacity necessary to do more than what is within their reach.
