Macba delves into ecofeminism and social criticism and explores the work of Jordi Colomer, Mari Chordà and Teresa Solar

2023-11-28 19:34:55

Critical, ecofeminist and social. A season summarized in three words and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA) as a paradigm of a community and committed museum. For its part, it even has a traveling garden, a figurehead of a social program and citizen involvement that exemplifies that “new way of thinking and building the museum based on affection and affection” of which Elvira Dyangani Ose has championed. «The MACBA has its own idiosyncrasy. We have an incredible opportunity to transform this museum into something unique, something that is different from MOMA and has a relevance different from MOMA. To begin with, because we are a public museum and we want to be radically public,” said the museum director during the presentation of the 2023-2024 season.

The question, in this case, had to do with the scale of the museum and the eternal debate of whether the hyperlocality of the story would not be subtracting potential from the international dimension. “We have to pay direct attention to the community around us but we also have to pay attention to how we can support the internationalization of the works of art produced in Catalonia,” added Dyangani Ose.

On the paper and the walls of the Meier building (the expansion, until further notice, remains paralyzed), all this translates into a new movement to the permanent collection, monographic exhibitions dedicated to Mari Chorda,Jordi Colomer y Teresa Solar and a small format exhibition dedicated to the magazine ‘Visual’. It is, the director said, a year of “consolidation of projects” that she is launching with ‘108 days’, a production of Lydia Ourahmane whose title refers both to the days that the exhibition will remain in the museum and to the number of artists that the Algerian creator living in Barcelona has invited to participate in it. “It is a love letter to Barcelona,” Ourahmane herself has highlighted about an initiative that seeks to turn the MACBA into a porous space that absorbs what comes from outside.

Public programs

The humor of Jordi Colomer, the activism of Mari Chordà and the relationship with matter, language and body production of Teresa Solar are the great attractions of a season with hardly any international names but with hybrid projects such as ‘Song for many movements. Collective creation scenarios’ and ‘[contra]panorama’, halfway between the public program and the exhibition, and a new photographic and artistic look at the Barcelona of the neighborhoods that emerged with the post-war migrations.

The museum’s permanent collection, reorganized last year under the title of ‘Macba Collection. Prelude. Poetic intention’, continues to mutate and provide new historical, symbolic and gender readings through the incorporation of works by Ignasi Aballí, Mar Arza, Daniel G. Andújar, Soledad Sevilla, Francesc Torres or Yamadú Canosa, among many others. Special mention deserves the case of Antoni Tàpies, who in the year of the centenary of his birth will add three new pieces to the collection.

In parallel, the museum continues to expand its funds and add to the 5,700 pieces in the collection new works by Teresa Lanceta, Oriol Vilapuig, Mar Arza, Alfons Borrell and Oriol Vilanova, among others. Acquisitions that, explains the head of the MACBA collection, Antònia M. Perelló, respond to the need to recover local artists who were underrepresented, delve into works related to the body and performance, and open new ways of receiving history. .

With a budget of just over 13 million euros, Until October, the Macba received 208,000 visitors, which leads the museum manager, Eduard Vicente, to advance a year-end close to around 280,000 visitors. “We are getting closer and closer to 300,000 people,” he said in relation to a figure that is still far from the museum’s best pre-pandemic years, when it easily exceeded 350,000 visitors. What will not grow, at least for now, are the museum’s facilities: with the expansion project paralyzed since the beginning of the year due to the increase in the cost of materials and the construction process, the execution remains paused waiting to meet with the new governments municipal and state.