The hegemonic, Eurocentric and patriarchal vision of the world has long been dismantled. The art history we studied in the 20th century has been called into question, precisely because it excludes the multiple narratives that were simultaneously generated from non-Western cultures and geographies. We live in a world that is still hierarchical, but in which, at the same time, there are channels for making peripheral, transversal and diverse voices and views heard. Knowledge is no longer transmitted, but has multiple levels and is generated in a collective and de-hierarchical manner, based on doubt, tensions, contradictions and rereadings.
In this context, museums can no longer be the guardians of the treasures of the past, but rather great archives, repositories of memory (following Walter Benjamin) whose collections change, evolve, emphasize complexity and open up to multiple readings. A good example of this was the exhibition La caja entropica by Francesc Torres at the MNAC, which was based on the museum’s collection, understood as an archive in which it is possible to investigate what has been rejected, what is archived but left aside, in order to offer a portrait of a given moment, as faithful as official history.
The emphasis on critical and peripheral positions, the recovery of forgotten or silenced narratives or rereadings of history, with the consequent creation of new maps, generates new networks of connections based on alternative, multiple and simultaneous narratives, which allow Barcelona to be connected with, for example, Abu Dhabi or Guatemala City. Thus, in the exhibition From Barcelona to Abu Dhabi (co-organised by MACBA and ADMAF, Abu Dhabi) we rediscover the photographs of the Emirati artist Ebtisam Abdul Aziz in which a female figure appears, dressed entirely in black (including the head and face) contorting inside a white ring that prevents her from moving freely, evidencing the conflict and the effort of women in the United Arab Emirates (and in the world, in general) to overcome the social limitations imposed. From Guatemala, Cuerpo sobrevuelto by Nora Pérez photographs women’s bodies that overflow (literally) the restrictions that girdles try to impose by following imposed physical and beauty canons. Completing this peripheral tour, in One Year Women’s Performance. 2015-2016, recently exhibited at the Virreina, Raquel Friera is based on the action of the Taiwanese Tehching Hsieh in which he clocked in every day for a year, in an attempt, naturally unsuccessful, to quantify artistic work. Friera asks a series of women to sign and photograph themselves every time they finish domestic tasks or care for family members, precisely to make them visible.
In short, three examples from geographically distant contexts, which share views and artistic discourses on the role of women in very diverse societies.
[Article published in Bonart, 2018]
