Art has always gone beyond aesthetics and the work itself, whether linked to cave spirituality, architectural shelter –and the representation of power– or criticism of the world in which we live. The Macba not only does not avoid it, but in the first mutation of the permanent exhibition under the direction of Elvira Dyangani Ose, Col·lecció Macba. Prelude. Poetic intention, he insists on it with the incorporation of 21 new works, among which there are several recent pieces.
Thus, for example, you can see Valor refugi II, by Teresa Estapé, which from a series of blank pages –one of which hides a sheet of 18-carat gold– hanging on the wall criticizes the commodification of art. On the pages, “show me the money” has been written without ink, the slogan popularized in the movie Jerry Maguire.
The public order installation is also critical. Vagrants, thugs and social dangerousness, by Daniel Gasol, which draws on the investigation into the law of lazy and thugs that was promulgated in 1933, during the Republic, and which was not repealed until 1995. The pieces on display include a mural with various sentences due to the law, such as a case in which a woman, accused of prostitution, did not answer the questions of the interrogators, who insisted without hesitation. Days later, the doctors diagnosed that the woman could not answer because she was deaf and mute: she ended up in a psychiatric hospital. It also includes the screening of the video You cannot be left alone, with seven interviews with people who would currently fall within the legal profile of said law. All to denounce the legal will to gag and separate especially the poor, as Gasol explains in the homonymous book that includes part of his research, edited by the Chiquita Room gallery, where the work was exhibited.
You can also see two works by Max de Esteban under the title A forest (A forest) around the infrastructure of artificial intelligence: on the one hand, a series of photographs showing the result of programming a specialized deep learning platform in facial recognition so that it offers portraits of itself, a first selfie of the AI, which does not have an anthropomorphic form but a rhizomatic one. On the other hand, there is a video based on interviews with fifteen of the world's leading investors in AI: "I am interested in explaining how the oligarchies that control the infrastructure think, what political and personal motivations are behind it, in a kind of ethnology of the elites global, and the truth is that it is scary ”, he explained yesterday.
Or Carlos Bunga's installation Animisme, made expressly for the exhibition and which explores everyday life through various domestic objects in a kind of "expanded painting", objects that according to the artist have a soul and invite us to think that they are not just what they they seem because "we live in a world where the idea of home is changing".
Works by Marcel Broodthaers, Joan Brossa, Fito Conesa, Helen Escobedo, Marine Hugonnier, Elena del Rivero, Joaquim Chancho, Tres, Domènec, Anne-Lise Coste, Ahlam Shibli, Joan Morey, Lucía C. Pino or the installation have also been incorporated. about our relationship with the sun, House of the Sun, by Pedro Torres, as well as the progress of the piece by Luz Broto A wall, a wall that will cross the building and modify the circulation to rethink the museum when it is finished in 2024.
When the new exhibition of the Macba's permanent collection was inaugurated half a year ago, Dyangani already spoke of his intention for it to be a dynamic and changing exhibition, and yesterday the first of these variations was presented, which continues with the desire to break the framework institution to offer a space for reflection and criticism. For Dyangani –curated with Antònia M. Perelló, Claudia Segura and Patricia Sorroche–, “it is crucial that the works are at the center of the artistic experience” in order to “confront ideas with poetics, with the museum as the axis of modernity”. , a great opportunity for him to enter into dialogue with the artists.
“Whenever I have had to ask myself crucial questions in life, I have found an answer in works of art,” Dyangani said. Rethinking the world through art.
Catalan version, here
