Panorama 21: Notes for an Eye Fire

With the participation of: Ana Domínguez, El Palomar, Laia Estruch, Arash Fayez, Antoni Hervàs, Rasmus Nilausen, nyamnyam with Pedro Pineda, Claudia Pagès, Aleix Plademunt, Marria Pratts, Stella Rahola Matutes, Eulàlia Rovira, Ruta de autor, Adrian Schindler, Rosa Tharrats, Gabriel Ventura and Marc Vives.


Panorama inaugural edition, titled ‘Notes for an Eye Fire’, was curated by Hiuwai Chu (Head of Exhibitions, MACBA) and Latitudes, with coordination by Berta Cervantes. As the “notes” of the title suggests, the exhibition attempted to jot down, to lay out and to connect without seeking to be in any way definitive. Panorama began in 2021 as a museum-wide multidisciplinary triennial programme focusing on contemporary art practices from and around Barcelona. Emphasising collaborative approaches, each edition, led by a different curatorial team, would pair a museum member with an external curator or agent.

Occupying the 1200m2 top floor of the Meier building, ‘Notes for an Eye Fire’ brought together specially commissioned works and recent productions shown in Barcelona for the first time. The exhibition spanned a wide range of disciplines, including painting, sculpture, works on paper, video installation, performance, photography, and textiles, and was driven by a desire to defend and verify the making of on-site exhibitions as experiences that envelop us as whole sensing bodies in space.

Recognising that some visitors were unable to visit the museum in the wake of COVID-19 restrictions, significant efforts were made to maximise its online potential. The exhibition website included participant profiles, images of related works, detailed artwork descriptions, as well as behind-the-scenes photographs and videos documenting the exhibition-making process.

The exhibited works interwove concerns and leitmotifs that emerged from the curators’ studio visits and conversations with the art community, including the city’s self-image, notions of reparation and belonging, gender dissidence, and humanity’s relationship with nonhuman life.

The title, drawn from Gabriel Ventura’s 2020 poetry collection, evoked a powerful metaphor questioning the dominance of vision. It encouraged an expanded notion of seeing—engaging all senses and inspiring new ways of navigating the world, remembering, and producing knowledge.

The ocular motif took on a life of its own in the exhibition’s imagination, in projects exploring theatre or performance, the spatial interplay between stage and auditorium and narrative loops. Such perspectives and scales also encircled how the museum established a connection with its neighbourhood, and vice versa, at a time when perhaps we all questioned and saw afresh what our own place in the world might be.

A small publication “Passió i cartografia per a un incendi dels ulls” [Passion and cartography for an eye fire] served as the exhibition’s poetic colophon, and included a new three-part poem–dérive by Gabriel Ventura that decomposed the exhibition’s plurality of voices into a textual topography. As part of the exhibition’s public programme, Ventura and the flamenco singer Pere Martínez recited and sang the verses during a performative event that took visitors through the museum galleries. Designed by Ana Domínguez Studio, the book features photo documentation of the works in the exhibition, alongside a ghostly evocation of its graphic identity—translucent pages veil the images and words, creating an effect of billowing smoke clouds and flashes of energy.