The Luminic de Sant Cugat festival celebrates its 5th edition with a dozen exhibitions and various parallel activities

This year, the contest is inspired by the unconscious to present a dozen exhibitions with a clear female lead. Thus, it will be possible to see works by prestigious photographers such as Diambra Mariani, Laura F. Izuzquiza and Laura Voskian. One of the highlights will be the exhibition Photos with toys by the photographer Gabriel Casas i Galobardes (1892-1973) at the National Archives. Talks, screenings and round tables will complete the program. With the aim of encouraging collecting, for the second year the Photographic Art Work Market will be held at the Celler Modernista in Sant Cugat.

During the presentation of the fifth edition of the festival at the Museu del Monestir de Sant Cugat, Amanda Bernal, one of its directors, recalled that the Lumínic is an author's photography festival that prioritizes the narrative ability of the artists over the his technique and which also wants to be "a space for meeting, studying and social transformation through photography".

With this aim, the contest will "flood" Sant Cugat del Vallès with photography for a month and a half. This year, the exhibitions and parallel activities will have a dozen venues spread across the municipality, combining emblematic public spaces such as the Monastery of Sant Cugat, the House of Culture or the Modernist Cellar with other private spaces such as the Abacus bookstore or a concessionaire of the Skoda brand, which will host one of the exhibitions. "This diversity of venues shows that the festival is increasingly rooted in the city", said Bernat Millet, one of its directors.

With the help of the Guild of Galerists of Catalonia, the Luminic will also come to Barcelona and Lleida with exhibitions in the galleries Artur Ramon and Espai Cavallers respectively.

With the photographic unconscious as the theme of this edition, the contest will have three distinct blogs. One corresponds to the ten shows curated by the festival, the second to the exhibitions of students from secondary schools in the municipality and the third to the shows organized in four galleries of the Guild of Galerists of Catalonia.

On the first weekend, May 31, June 1 and 2, the second edition of the Mercat Fotográfico d'Obra Artística will be held at the Celler Modernista de Sant Cugat, where you can also enjoy free workshops and activities for adults and families The aim, explained the directors of the competition, is to encourage photography collecting, following the example of countries around us such as France.

This year's Lumínic program will be complemented by several workshops, talks, screenings and round tables.

Exhibitions

With We can't imagine the length of time it took to make the universe, the Italian Diambra Mariani explores the connection between photography and literature, placing images in the poem 8 Moons, by the American poet Sharon Olds. This succession of landscapes, details, self-portraits, collages and triptychs can be seen at the Casa de la Cultura, the same space that will host the Ariadna exhibition, by Laura F. Izuzquiza, a visual journey that waves between the surface and the depth of the conscience.

Cypsela is the title of Salvi Danés' exhibition at the Museu del Monestir de Sant Cugat, an autobiographical project between the intimate diary and the topographical fable that takes its name from a mythological city located in the Empordà, in front of the Islands Medes. With the work Riturné, exhibited at Abacus, Mauro Curti returns to the Piedmont region to establish a new connection with his native land, in an attempt to preserve the living connection with the past. Sublima, by Juan de la Quintana, at the Movento Sarsa Škoda Dealership, becomes a photographic self-portrait, intimate and introspective, which explores deeply unconscious, suppressed and dormant facets.

The Argentinian Laura Voskian explores the void through photography with En el momento exacto, o muy cerca de lo se indica como finale, exhibited at the Mercantic, and Enrique Pezo Gómez, at the EMD Valldoreix Exhibition Hall , puts the focus with Fin del río on communities originating in the Amazon to interpellate the Western collective memory and break with the colonialism of the gaze.

Gabriel Casas and Galobardes

Luminic, the National Archives and the Toy Museum of Catalonia delve into the most intimate nature of the photographer Gabriel Casas i Galobardes (1892-1973), one of the most important Catalan photographers of the 1930s, with the exhibition Photos with toys. Curated by the critic Julià Guillamon, it is largely built with unpublished family photographs from the years of the Republic, of children and adults with dolls, costumes and pedal cars, as protagonists, and reveal a fascination for toys, shops , the Kings of the East and their pages. The exhibition also includes a section on the mascot of the Revolution, 'El més petit de tots' (1937), a work by the sculptor Miquel Paredes published by the Propaganda Commission of the Generalitat de Catalunya. It can be seen at the National Archives of Catalonia, headquarters of Luminic since its inception, from June 7 to July 26.