Montse Badia, the shared present (Interview Montse Frisach)
MONTSE BADIA
Montse Badia (Barcelona, 1965) is an independent curator and co-founder and director of the digital platform A*DESK. She studied Art History at the University of Barcelona and took part in the De Appel Curatorial Program in Amsterdam. She works in museums and art centres, independent venues and interventions in the public space, online and in print publications. Among her curatorial projects, ‘Screens and Pastilles’ at ADN Platform (2019) and the Geysers program at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) (2022-2024) stand out. Badia believes that the function of the curator is ‘to explore issues that are relevant to understanding the world and also to accompany artists in their processes of research and production, and be good interlocutors with the institutions’. In her work she addresses topics such as ‘the standardisation in which we live, the loss of rights and the analysis of the past to understand the present’. One of her benchmarks in curating is Valentín Roma, ‘for the way in which he approaches subjects of great importance and works with and from the context, without being exclusively local’. Badia believes that for art to flourish it needs ‘a good, uncomplicated cultural fabric, one that gives space to artists and cultural professionals to develop projects and create networks of exchange at the local, national and international levels’. For her, ‘the artist is someone who questions things, who looks at them from new perspectives and is receptive to tendencies in society, not to replicate them but to situate her- or himself in a shared present’. She recommends the artists Núria Güell and Enric Farrés-Duran.
NÚRIA GÜELL
Núria Güell (Vidreres, Girona, 1981) views her artistic practice as ‘a socially and politically necessary practice in which the cultural fact and the established are put into play’. Her work process starts with the research and analysis of data and situations, continues with the framing of questions and results in a proposal for action with real impact. She dige deep into issues that create friction while pointing to the legal interstices through which abuses of power or unjust conditions occur: the heritage as the object of illegal actions, financial dynamics linked to tax evasion, immigration laws, the fiscal privileges of the Catholic church, or the working conditions of artists, among others. www.nuriaguell.com
ENRIC FARRÉS DURAN
Enric Farrés Duran (Palafrugell, Girona, 1983) is a teller of stories in which reality and fiction meet and are modified. His work starts from research, coincidences, fortuitous encounters and the possibility of making connections between different places, objects, circumstances and temporalities. His projects may take the form of installations, objects, guided tours or publications. A couple of examples: In Order To Find, You Must First Learn To Hide (2018), a catalogue that is embodied by the artist himself, in the manner of the characters in the novel Fahrenheit 451; Glasses with Museum Glass to Showcase the World (2023), spectacles with special safety glass that questions the mechanisms of the gaze and the normativity associated with art.
