A tourist destination city needs to to offer more than just its monuments, its classic museums or its history. Malaga also offers the picturesque streets and neighbourhoods that are home to its unconventional countercultural movements that will surprise us with examples of the most underground art: where we can try food from many parts of the world or enjoy music and art performances from these fledgling movements. Many visitors to Malaga seek to know more about the place, more beyond sunning on the beach, eating the typical fried fish or watching flamenco. An alternative hipster city Malaga, is gaining more adepts and in this decade is fast becoming a national reference on its own merits.
If we wanted to mention one neighbourhood where all these tendencies converge, it would have to be Soho, the arts area of Malaga, situated in what is known as the Ensanche Centro, close to the port and the Alameda Principal. Walking through this neighbourhood our attention is drawn to the huge murals painted by the well known street artists and designers ROA, Sal East, Obey or D’Face on building facades, as we discover the streets whose shops offer us the latest fashion and accessories, comic books, retro furniture and decoraation, vintage barbers or art galleries.
Naturally, an arts area must have a centre of reference, a focus of avant-garde emergent art. This has be the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) that opened in 2003 and which, since then, has put on exhibitions by renowned artists. Here visitors and locals alike have been able to see works by Mark Ryden, Paul McCarthy, Louise Bourgeois, Yoshitimo Nara and Tony Cragg among others.
The Pompidou Centre is another landmark both for the works of past and present centuries on display and for its location under an innovative structure known as The Cube that we pass on our way towards the pier leisure area Muelle Uno. The Picasso Museum, housed in the Palacio de Buenavista is another must. Here we can see many works by the great painter himself and temporary exhibitions of other great artists’ work like Andy Warhol for instance.
La Termica with its own contemporary cultural centre is another meeting point for trendy alternatives, offering everything from workshops to debates, to theatre, concerts and arthouse cinema. Its festivals are memorable: John Waters, the film director, paid homage to the trash movement with Cultura Basura and the hipster public delighted in La Noche más Queer, centred on the figure of García Lorca.
Last but not least,we must not forget La Casa Invisible, a cultural and social centre in the heart of the city that, for many years, has been offering seminars, courses, workshops, debates, talks and a wide variety of artistic activities.
