I remember that in the 1990s there were works that explored the body and exposed it in all its vulnerability. I remember sculptures and installations that were displayed in all their fragility, such as the light bulbs or the piles of sweets by Félix González-Torres, who shared empathy and loss with the spectators. One century was ending and another was beginning with all the uncertainties and transformations that we could not even imagine at the time. Surely in the last twenty years there have been more changes in the way we work, move and relate to each other than in the entire previous century.
We are in 2018 and some of the artists of the 1990s are still references for other artists who had just been born then. Artists from the first decades of the 21st century who share with their predecessors a feeling that the world is changing in a direction contrary to any constructive logic. This uncertainty, helplessness, but also resistance and common sense, authenticity and return to the essential is very present in a way of working that generates proposals based on orality, on the transmission of stories and the use of the voice as an artistic object, in the shared experiences of projects that endure as memory or as a record, in exhibitions that explore what makes us vulnerable, the fragility of structures and, at the same time, their potential.
Six examples are better than a thousand theories: Lúa Coderch works with the voice, “the first material, the most available”, with hypnotic and precise narrations that focus on the minimum, on the infra-mince. Anna Dot explores the limitation of language and communication, the notion of translation, focusing on the minimum nuances, twists and repetitions that end up distorting the meaning. Enric Farrés-Duran tells stories in which the real and the fictional end up meeting and modifying each other. Research, coincidences and chance encounters allow her to create stories based on unexpected connections. Irina Mutt curates exhibitions that discuss hardness and resistance, fragility and vulnerability as non-antagonistic notions, affections and feelings, protecting oneself and protecting others. The exhibition A break can be what we are aiming for includes an inflatable installation made of various plastic materials (Dream Castles by Mycket) and works that put the body and structures in conflict (Moat by Laia Estruch).
If the artists who worked in the 90s emphasized fragility and impossibility, the artists born in the 80s and 90s are well aware of where they speak from and what tools they have at their disposal, what they can expect (or not) from institutions, the globality and instability of the world in which they live and also the immense potential of individuals.
Images from the exhibition “A break can be what we are aiming for”, curated by Irina Mutt at La Capella in Barcelona. Views of the installations Dream Castles by Mycket and Moat by Laia Estruch.
Photographs: Pep Herrero
[Article published in Bonart, 2018]
