Nineteen contemporary creators from different generations come together to vindicate with their art the memory of those silenced by the Franco regime in the exhibition Un altre fi. The substraction. Art and Anti-Francoism. Curated by Nora Ancarola and Amanda Cuesta, the exhibition can be visited free of charge at the Born Center for Culture and Memory (Born CCM), in Barcelona, until April 16.
“We must not forget that the space in which these works are exhibited is a cultural center but also a memory center. And this is something that has not always been claimed and we want to start doing it through projects like this one. Memory permeates our present and this is something that we must not forget as a society”, assured the director of the center, Marta Marín-Dòmine, during the inauguration this Thursday.
The result is a set of twenty-two works created from the 70s that "are inspired by the silenced rebellion of that stage and that allows us to observe how the different generations have transformed collective resistance into a cry against oblivion," Marín has advanced. -Domine. Very diverse works among which oral testimonies and historical images are also interspersed, such as those of a group of women demonstrating for their rights.
“The idea was to put aside the monuments and large-format works, which are more related to politics, and focus on smaller creations. It was clear to us that we wanted to bet on stories that were not imposed and that would find their fit with the environment in which they are exhibited”, Ancarola has justified.
The center proposes a tour structured into four thematic areas that passes through the different exhibition halls of the site, the entrance halls, the walkways of the center and even the archaeological site itself. In the latter is the work of Pep Agut, who from the plaster reproduction of the columns of the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid, where he exhibited his work for the first time, threads the imperialist past of Spain.
The pioneering artist of conceptual art, Concha Jerez, also works with the columns, in this case those of the cultural center itself. In them, she has captured self-censored texts with which she intends to make the viewer reflect on "everything that we do not express openly and on which we keep a complicit silence, as was the case during the Francoist repression", as she herself expresses. The artist presents the installation La fosca del mirall, which has its origins in an action piece carried out in the old Carabanchel prison, a place where she went to ask the prisoners what they would do if they were released that same day.
In the exhibition there is also space for the counterculture and the voice it had in those difficult years. A proposal by the Barcelona artist Antoni Hervàs that mixes cabaret characters from scoundrel Barcelona with the nocturnal rite of Lemnos in honor of Aphrodite, an invocation to the gods of the subsoil to ridicule masculinity.
Before leaving, the visitor can take home a diary with a selection of visual poems by Guillem Viladot written in the 1970s and which "denounce the darkness and repression that are still intact today", as stated by Amanda Cuesta, who explains that "the purpose of printing the texts in the form of a newspaper is that people can disseminate their work so that it goes even further than it already has".
