Antoni Hervàs’ La Meiers / La Mellers (2021) is a two-part artwork created for the exhibition Apunts per a un incendi dels ulls (Notes for an Eye Fire) (at MACBA, Barcelona, until 27 February 2022) and inspired by Barcelona’s Teatre Arnau. Currently awaiting a major restoration, the Arnau was one of the most celebrated music hall and cabaret venues in the city until its closure in 2004. Toni honours a legacy of popular entertainment and recognises the energy and precarity of personalities who, despite all odds, still keep the show going.

Alluding to the Monopoly-like board game El Chino—a comic-book take on Barcelona’s El Raval neighbourhood—the project’s twinned elements take you on a route through the barrio, from the Teatre Arnau itself on Avinguda del Paral·lel to the entrance of the exhibition at MACBA, or vice-versa. (The title is a wink to the architect of the MACBA building, Richard Meier, and Raquel Meller, the star of the 1920s and 1930s who gives her name to the plaza in front of the Arnau.)

Toni collaborated with Pau Magrané and the street art project Arnau Gallery to graffiti the wall which fronts the Arnau during its restoration, creating a blatantly garish 24-metre mural (until the 10 January) that celebrates cabaret denizens such as Pierrot, Violeta la Burra, and Ángel Pavlovsky, and chronicles beloved neighbourhood theatres and bars of past and present such as Barcelona de Noche and El Molino. At the museum, the exhibition begins by passing through a papier-mâché portal conceived as a sort of boisterous animated character based on the fan-shaped pediment that once crowned the Arnau.