1730 to 1736, on the small island of Lanzarote, off the southern coast of Morocco, 32 volcanoes erupted, covering a quarter of the island in lava and consuming 11 villages. In 1919, Cesar Manrique was born in Arrecife, the island’s capital, leaving in his 20s to find success as a painter in Madrid, Paris and New York. He returned to Lanzarote in the mid-60s and began constructing a series of environments that incorporated themselves seamlessly into the island’s rocky, lava-encrusted landscape. Built in a high 60s aesthetic with matte black HR Giger exteriors and psychedelic Clockwork Orange interiors featuring abundant curves of serpentine white plaster, they were humbly referred to as “tourist centres” despite being so otherworldly and beautiful that it is actually difficult to process when inside them (whatever your thoughts may be on culinary foam, this would be like calling El Bulli a cafeteria). Though the spaces were at one time sparsely attended by a coterie of elite international jetsetters, the advent of the 50-euro EasyJet flight has democratized the demographics so that they’re now attended by a vast cross section of sunbaked Europeans with varying degrees of cultural and liquid capital. LAS MANOS places Manrique in the background and focuses on the teams of workers and craftspeople who built the spaces, carried out his vision, and in many cases served as creative collaborators