Lobismuller
Laia Abril
RM
English
Hardcover
192 pages
208 x 275 mm
2017
ISBN 9788416282647
“In some places in Galicia, the tradition goes that a male child born on Christmas Eve or Good Friday, or as the seventh or ninth in a consecutive line of male children, is predestined to become a lobishome.”†
What if the most bloodthirsty serial murder of Spain was not a man? In 1853, Manuel Blanco Romasanta was trialed for the murder of almost 20 women and children: he confessed to nine of them, but declared himself not guilty because he was suffering from a curse that turned him into a wolf. Romasanta then became part of the folklore of Galicia as the Werewolf of Allariz — as well as the Tallow Man, as they allegedly rendered the victims to make high quality soap. More than 150 years later, this case still haunts our collective memory and baffles criminologists, anthropologists and historians. In 2012 while investigating the fate of Romasanta, forensic scientists established that the killer could actually have been an intersex person. Lobismuller reconstructs the tale of the most enigmatic Spanish criminal, blurring gender duality and it makes us wonder how this new discovery could have played a role in the story.
About the Artist
Laia Abril (b.1986) is a research-based artist working with photography, text, video and sound. After graduating from college with a degree in Journalism she moved to New York to focus on photography where she decided to start telling intimate stories that raise uneasy and hidden realities related with sexuality, eating disorders and gender equality. In 2009, she enrolled the artist residency at FABRICA, the Benetton Research Centre in Treviso, where she worked as a researcher, photo editor and staff photographer at Colors Magazine for 5 years.
laiaabril.com
About the Publisher
Known for their elegant and engaging design sensibility, Mexico and Spain based RM publishes books on established and emerging Latin artists, photographers and cultural movements—from Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to Dr. Lakra and Lucha Libre.
rm-pa.org
