"Digesting the world where it is": emergencies and challenges of our species at CaixaForum

The fungus does not look for food but digests the world it is in from the mycelium, a dynamic underground network. Digesting the world where it is , an exhibition at the CaixaForum in Barcelona curated by Alba Colomo, leads us to think about the emergencies and challenges we are going through as a species, about the imminent needs to generate spaces for dialogue about the problems facing the planet.

Until October 30, this tour will be a space to evoke ideas, to relate them to each other, the fact of seeing us as an interdependent and ecodependent species. A possibility of producing systems that allow to remove the anthropocentric supremacy to reinvent new ways of living. An ecosystem in the form of an exhibition with intertwined ideas and living works.

Winning project of the Comisart 2020 call, it has been created from thirteen works, the vast majority from the La Caixa and MACBA collection, with a chronological framework from the eighties to the present day. A first element is the title that gives the exhibition its name, a quote from the biologist Merlin Sheldrake that the curator took as a direct thread to talk about human societies and how they are related to each other: "We live and breathe in space that the fungi leave behind.” Our survival is cohabitation.

Circular arrangement with a black cube in the center of the space with a projection by Tacita Dean. Now, the visitor's first contact will be the work Fungi, by Gabriel Alonso. A direct look at two fungi as they grow on the wall. A sense that reflects the interdependence and relationships that sustain life, with an element of literalness of the multi-organic body.

With Alonso and Dean, with this promotion of individualism and the superiority of the human species over nature, we want to rethink it as an animal species, and this can be seen in other works designed for the exhibition, such as Eva Lootz , Teresa Lanceta, Charo Pradas, Eva Fábregas or Vaivén miradores de estrellas , Victoria Civera's large-scale installation, or Pez luna , by Menchu Lamas from 1982.

The anthropologist Yayo Herrero will also weigh in on this entire ecosystem that Alba Colomo has devised for Digesting the world where it is , where the diverse collectivity makes the human being actively involved, in addition to seeing how the catalog of the exhibition, the Fervent Manifesto , by Mercedes Villalba, is published, a key text for conceiving the exhibition that will create bridges of union with the curator's text.

Along with these works, in September Mariana Silva will speak in the form of a preview of her work, a dialogue with the exhibition about how the representation of nature is projected in television documentaries and the influence of technology.

In the image: Tacita Dean, Gellért , 1998. Collection of Contemporary Art Fundació La Caixa. © Tacita Dean Courtesy of the artist, Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris