The MACBA presents a critical, participatory and eco-feminist program

The Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) presented this Tuesday the 2024 program, which aims to be "critical, participatory and eco-feminist". The equipment will have monographic exhibitions dedicated to Mari Chordà, Teresa Solar and Jordi Colomer. The Archipelago photographic project is also noteworthy. New images of the Barcelona of the neighborhoods and the exhibition dedicated to the disappeared Visual magazine. As for the curatorial changes, the main ones will arrive from June with proposals from Adrián Balseca, Katia Kameli, Younès Rahmoun, Dora García or Antoni Tàpies. The inauguration will be carried out by Lydia Ourahmane and her 108 days project, which invites more than a hundred people and groups to occupy the tower of the Meier building.

The new season of the museum will start from the hand of Ourahmane who has created a specific project for the museum tower. The proposal is entitled 108 days and refers to the total number of days that his exhibition will be open to the public, as well as the number of people the artist has invited to occupy the space during this period. As she herself has explained, the proposal wants to transfer to the interior of the facility "an expanded urban context" that emphasizes the individuals or groups that are part of its social landscape.

Halfway between the public program and the exhibition, at the beginning of the year two singular projects such as Cançó for many movements. Scenarios of collective creation and [contra]panorama will open to thinking in common about the knowledge that links and connects the inside and outside of the museum and the exhibition space. The first – curated by María Berríos and Sabel Gavaldon – includes a rich public program, accompanied by a scenography inhabited by moving archives that question the boundary between work and document.

The proposal includes different agents such as artists, musicians, poets and researchers, collectives and organizations, both national and international. In this sense, for seven weeks, it will turn the ground floor of the museum into a place of meeting, dialogue and listening that opens current and future research processes.

On the other hand, with a multidisciplinary curatorial and assembly team made up of Alicia Escobio, Yaiza Hernández, Yolanda Jolis, Anna Ramos and Isaac Sanjuán, [contra]panorama opens up to a choral dialogue with Elena Blesa, Antonio Gagliano, Dora Gacia, Albert Gironès, Nicolau Malevé, Montserrat Moliner, Julia Montilla, Eva Paià, Marina Ribot, Jara Rocha and Verónica Lahitte, to interrogate and incorporate, from artistic practice, issues such as working conditions and materials, social class and bureaucracies various

The magazine 'Visual' and a tribute to Jordi Corominas

The Visual origin exhibition. Film/Video/Information is part of the line of small-format samples that explore periodicals as a space for critical thinking. On this occasion, with the curatorship of Juan Bufill, the focus will be on Visual magazine (1977-1978) and on the attention that its creators devoted to art, television images and experimental cinema.

On the other hand, the MACBA will dedicate a monographic exhibition to Jordi Corominas, curated by Martí Peran, which will test the porosity of the museum. An extensive tour of his work developed from the late eighties to the present day, through multiple formats: sculptures, collages, installations, photography, video and live action.

During 2024, the Archipelago photographic project will also be offered. New images of Barcelona from the neighborhoods above the city, seen from the peripheral neighborhoods that emerged from the wave of post-war migration. This is a commission from the Neighborhood Plan of the Barcelona City Council, overseen by Jorge Ribalta. The project includes thirteen assignments, some of a transversal nature that cross neighborhoods, others of a very specific nature as case studies. All the participating artists have a link with the city of Barcelona, as is the case of Laia Abril, Bleda & Rosa, Gregori Civera, Gilbert Fastenaekens, José Luis Guerín, Manolo Laguillo, Pilar Monsell, Mabel Palacín or Pedro G. Romero, among others others

Finally, the personal commitment from feminism, the struggle to give visibility to women and claim their rights, activism, are closely linked to the work of Mari Chordà (Amposta, 1942). The MACBA, in co-production with the MAM Museum of Modern Art in Tarragona and with the curatorship of Teresa Grandas, will bring together a wide selection of the work of this painter, poet and activist.

Other scheduled facilities

Next year, MACBA will also premiere the film installation Carmen, by filmmaker and performance artist Wu Tsang (1982 Worcester, Massachusetts), who received the prestigious MacArthur grant in 2018. Combining documentary techniques with fantastic forays into the imaginary, his works explore hidden histories and marginalized narratives. This one focuses on the popular constructions of the myth of Carmen and stars Rocío Molina, Vanessa Montoya and Yinka Esi Graves.

In addition, the co-production between the CA2M in Madrid, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin and the MACBA will bring to Barcelona a solo exhibition by Teresa Solar (Madrid, 1985). Curated by Tania Pardo and Claudia Segura, the main idea of the exhibition is to allude to the relationship with matter, language and bodily production through a museography that changes and expands in a different way to each of the seats

Curatorial changes

Throughout the year 2024, changes will occur that will generate new relationships and dialogues. It was detailed this Tuesday by the head of the MACBA collection, Antonia Maria Perelló, who explained that in January the works will be included in the exhibition: Vitrines CMYK (2011) by Ignasi Aballí, Armario de aristas ( 2020) by Mar Arza and Inestable Eu (2019) by Yamandú Canosa – presented in the Uruguay Pavilion of the 58th edition of the Venice Biennale–, which will enter into dialogue with the works of Francesc Torres, Manolo Laguillo, Xavier Ribas and Antoni you cover

Curatorial changes will take place in June that will significantly vary the structure and address new narratives and relationship models. The area dedicated to spaces around orality and non-linguistic codes will present videographic works by Adrián Balseca, Katia Kameli and Danica Dakić, together with the installation 77 (2014) by Younès Rahmoun, made up of seventy-seven lamps which represent the seventy-seven branches of faith within Islam. Speech, signs and codes find different approaches in the works of Dora García, Soledad Sevilla, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel G. Andújar and Antoni Tàpies, where the political aspects of language are accentuated.

With independent stances, some from feminist and queer positions, works by Mireia Sallarès, Cabello/Carceller, Pepe Espaliú, Sinéad Spelman, Lucia Nogueira, Susy Gómez, Lola Lasurt, Helena Vinent, Leonora de Barros, Carmen Calvo or Charo Pradas are presented , others.

Finally, and continuing with the desire to develop specific projects that propose new ways of occupying and inhabiting the museum's spaces, a project by Eva Fàbregas, co-produced with the Fundación Botín, will join Luz Broto's installation, work in progress, started since the opening of the exhibition. The two Tunneladoras (2022) by Teresa Solar will be shown in the museum tower, works presented at the 59th Venice Biennale and incorporated into the MACBA Collection this same year.

Perelló recalled that the MACBA currently has around 6,000 works and that the guidelines set by the consortium state that the acquisition must be focused on recovering figures from the local context, performance and action, as well as the reception of history. However, he highlighted the work that is done "in research".

13 MEUR budget

In order to carry out this entire program, the MACBA has a budget for the year 2024 of 13 million euros (MEUR). Of the total invested in current expenditure, a total of 2.2 MEUR will be allocated to activity costs, such as exhibitions and activities. As for the audience, in 2023 the highest figure of the last four years has been reached with more than 208,000 visitors up to the month of October, 10% compared to the same period of the previous year.