With the participation of: Ana Domínguez,
El Palomar (Mariokissme & R. Marcos Mota),
Laia Estruch,
Arash Fayez,
Antoni Hervàs,
Rasmus Nilausen,
nyamnyam (Ariadna Rodríguez & Iñaki Álvarez) with
Pedro Pineda,
Claudia Pagès,
Aleix Plademunt,
Marria Pratts,
Stella Rahola Matutes,
Eulàlia Rovira,
Ruta de autor (Aymara Arreaza R. & Lorena Bou Linhares),
Adrian Schindler,
Rosa Tharrats,
Gabriel Ventura, and
Marc Vives.
The
Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) is launching a new series of exhibitions entitled
Panorama, focusing on contemporary art practices in and around Barcelona. With an emphasis on collaborative practices and presenting diverse perspectives, each edition of
Panorama will be led by a different curatorial collaboration, composed of a member of the
MACBA team together with an independent curator or collective.
The inaugural edition of
Panorama is titled ‘
Notes for an Eye Fire’ and is curated by Hiuwai Chu (Head of Exhibitions, MACBA) and
Latitudes, and coordinated by Berta Cervantes. As the “notes” of the title suggests, this group exhibition attempts to jot down, to lay out and to connect without seeking to be in any way definitive.
Occupying the entire top floor of the Meier building, ‘
Notes for an Eye Fire’ will bring together a group of specially commissioned works and recent productions being shown in Barcelona for the first time. It comprises a wide range of disciplines, including painting, sculpture, works on paper, video installation, performance, photography and textiles, and is 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.
The exhibition is not driven by one overarching subject, yet the works weave together concerns and leitmotifs that have 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 our relationship with nonhuman life.
The title, borrowed from a 2020 book of poetry by
Gabriel Ventura, conjures up a powerful metaphor that provokes a questioning of the dominant vision, urging us to explore an expanded definition of seeing that engages our other senses and entails new ways of navigating the world, of remembering and of producing knowledge.
The circular eye takes on a life of its own in the exhibition’s imagination, in the form of projects that explore theatre or performance, the spatial relationship between stage and auditorium and the loop as narrative. Such perspectives and scales also encircle how the museum establishes a connection with its neighbourhood, and vice versa, at a time when perhaps we are all questioning and seeing afresh what our own place in the world might be.
