The MNAC is linked to contemporary creation with the "Guèisers" project

Geysers at the National Art Museum of Catalonia , a program curated by Montse Badia, is part of the work that the Museum carries out linked to contemporary creation, bringing together four artistic proposals by Ro Caminal, Cristina Lucas, Raquel Friera and Núria Güell.

The first of these projects, Soc un objecte de la teva fantasia , by Ro Caminal, can be seen in room 48 of the National Museum and is based on the work In the presence of the lord (1891), by Francesc Masriera, to question representation and the gaze as colonial devices.

The uncertainties of the present entail the need to rethink deeply; museums are not alien to these urgencies and are opening up to reflect on their role in society. The Guèisers program was born in this contextual and vital framework.

The four artists who participate in this program investigate the Museum based on their own cultural and personal background, react to the contents, pay attention to the stories it tells, its discourse, its collections, what is seen and the which is not seen And from here, transversal itineraries, unexpected and non-predictive shapes and formats appear.

Geysers at the National Art Museum of Catalonia :

Ro Caminal explores the world of representation and works in the space of intersection between the visual arts and anthropology. He begins his research in room 48 "Orientalisms" of the National Museum, where he focuses on a specific work: In the Presence of the Lord (1891) by Francesc Masriera. The work allows him to start a process of questioning representation and the gaze as colonial devices. Starting from the reference of the thinker Edward Said, who understood Orientalism as a form of binary thinking that produces a knowledge that opposes the West / East, Ro Caminal presents a poster that complements and revises the original and the phrase "I am a object of your fantasy" which emphasizes aspects that allow the work to be reread based on critical keys.

Cristina Lucas starts from an interest in issues such as sustainability, the climate crisis and the limitation of natural resources to work with mineral and natural elements, present both in nature and in the human body. The overexploitation of natural resources for the excessive production of consumer objects (especially linked to technology) has been the starting point for approaching the Museum. Interested in a specific element, cobalt, which in the past was used to manufacture pigments and is now a limited and at the same time necessary resource in the production of electric batteries, the encounter with the mural that Joan Miró did for IBM in year 1978, currently located in the Sala de la Cúpula and in which cobalt blue appears, has been the trigger for a performative conference by the artist that will take place in December 2022.

In 2023, the works of Raquel Friera will be shown based on the notion of governance within the Museum and of Núria Güell, in the context of the underlying power relations in the canonical stories.