Matthew Lopez’s play The Inheritance is about different generations of gay men in New York City: those of today and those of yesterday, those who fought for their rights and against AIDS and its stigmatization. The legacy referred to in the title is “that of history, community and self.”

In recent months we have lost two people to whom we owe a lot. Montse Guillén lived in New York in the 1980s and suffered the loss of many of her friends. One of them, Keith Haring, had her help in managing the permits and finding a location in Barcelona for the mural Tots junts podem parar la sida (Together we can stop AIDS) (1989). Miralda’s partner and accomplice, Montse Guillén made a unique contribution with her way of linking culinary innovation with artistic creativity. With Miralda they created the restaurant El Internacional in New York and the FoodCultura project, a visionary proposal that explores the interrelationships between cuisine, art and science, and that collects, archives and activates aspects of human identities, rituals and culinary traditions. Montse was an active, energetic, laughing person and always ready to embark on new adventures.

Just a few weeks later, Antoni Mercader, a pioneer of multimedia art in our country and member of the Grup de Treball, where he met Muntadas, among others, also left us. He was co-author, together with Eugeni Bonet, of the first book on video art published in Spain: En torno al vídeo (1980). For a couple of years, he was in charge of the Dilluns de Vídeo in La Virreina, programming representative tapes of the evolution of the medium. He played a key role in defining the Mediateca de la Caixa, directed by Carme Garrido, conceived as a large accessible archive that focused on the social use of new media. But, above all, Antoni Mercader was a generous person who shared his experience and knowledge while building bridges between generations of artists, critics and curators.

The generations that came after us, and also those that have come —and will come— after us, owe an immense debt to Montse Guillén and Antoni Mercader. For them, for Montse and Antoni, we are left with a deep feeling of esteem, homage and, above all, gratitude.

Article published in BONART 202. Autumn-Winter 2025

There is frequent discussion around how different players in the art ecosystem are redefining their roles and working models. Hauser & Wirth stands out in this regard—not only as one of the most influential galleries on the global art scene, but also for how it has developed each of its spaces in distinct ways, incorporating elements of environment and well-being that enrich the experience for collectors, clients, and visitors alike. Hauser & Wirth Menorca is a prime example, bringing together nature, sustainability, and a certain sense of exclusivity.

But this is not the time to analyze gallery models. Rather, we turn to the two exhibitions currently on view at this unique venue—solo shows by two artists with firmly established careers: Mika Rottenberg and Cindy Sherman.

Cindy Sherman. The Women

Encountering Cindy Sherman’s work is always noteworthy—especially considering that her last solo exhibition in Spain took place back in 1996 at the Museo Nacional – Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, co-organized with the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam.

On this occasion, The Women brings together a compelling selection of works created between the 1970s and 2010s. Among them are some of her most iconic series, such as Untitled Film Stills (1977–1980), where Sherman stages fictional film stills that evoke the nouvelle vague, 1960s French cinema, Italian neorealism, and even Hitchcock.

This is the only series to which Sherman has assigned a title. As she explains in a documentary produced by Art21—screened as part of the exhibition—she generally avoids titling her works, feeling she isn’t particularly skilled at it and preferring instead to leave room for ambiguity and multiple interpretations. The show in Menorca also includes early pieces from her student years, already foreshadowing the aesthetic and conceptual approach of Untitled Film Stills. In these early images—as in much of her work—Sherman uses makeup, wigs, masks, and costumes, performing as model, director, and photographer by triggering the camera herself from within the scene. Also featured are selections from the Murder Series, where she embodies mysterious, everyday characters that anticipate some of the figures later seen in her commercial film Office Killer (1997).

The heart of the exhibition, however, lies in her later explorations of women—middle-aged, from diverse social and economic backgrounds—placed in enigmatic settings. Sometimes these are dramatic, painterly landscapes that starkly contrast with the haute couture garments worn by the characters (in collaboration with Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar); other times, the works rely on layered compositions and double exposures.

The series informally known as The Flappers revisits different archetypes of women from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s—figures who embodied empowerment and a desire to modernize society. These works also introduce themes of aging and the passage of time. One of the highlights of the documentary mentioned before shows Sherman in her studio, where she reveals drawers filled with dental prosthetics, ocular accessories, and masks. We also see her enthusiastically thrift-shopping for outfits—animal prints, sequins, and all manner of glittery attire—which often inspire the emergence of new photographic characters.

Her ongoing investigation into identity construction through self-representation—a central theme of her practice—feels particularly prescient in today’s era of social media, especially Instagram. Fittingly, one can find the cindyshermanlegacyproject on that very platform—an initiative by Hauser & Wirth devoted to preserving her photographs and ensuring the longevity of her artistic legacy.

Mika Rottenberg. Vibrant Matter

Mika Rottenberg’s Vibrant Matter blurs the line between reality and fiction to explore post-capitalist life systems and how they shape our existence. Her immersive installations and video works often confront viewers with absurd mechanisms of labor, production, and consumption. Two major pieces featured in the show are Cosmic Generator (2017)—first presented at Skulptur Projekte Münster—and Spaghetti Blockchain (2019).

Cosmic Generator weaves together real and imaginary scenes linking distant places such as Mexico, California, and a plastic goods market in China. Spaghetti Blockchain, meanwhile, focuses on materials—from raw substances to artificial textures, or the tiniest particles documented during a research stay at CERN. This three-channel video installation includes a meticulously crafted soundscape, incorporating everything from plastic ball manipulation and ASMR-style effects to traditional Siberian throat singing, generating immersive connections to both space and nature.

This sonic dimension also enriches the visit to her latest installation, Lampshares (2024–2025), in which Rottenberg transforms her New York studio into a kind of circular economy. Created in collaboration with Inner City Green Team and Gary Dusek, this series of lamps is made from invasive vines gathered in upstate New York and recycled plastic sourced from local dumpsters. In doing so, Rottenberg builds functional sculptures from materials often considered waste or toxic. Yet these substances, derived from petroleum, originate from once-living organisms millions of years ago. By repurposing such detritus, the artist performs a gesture of transformation—redefining the negative connotations of these materials and postponing their environmental impact through renewed utility.

Cindy Sherman. The Women y Mika Rottenberg. Vibrant Matter are on view at Hauser & Wirth Menorca through 26 October 2025.

In June 2020, Berlin’s legendary techno club Berghain, closed during the pandemic, reopened to present the Studio Berlin exhibition, featuring work by 117 artists living in the city. One of them, Rirkrit Tiravanija, presented an installation outside the building with the phrase “Morgen ist die Frage” [Tomorrow is the question].

Four years later, this phrase and this reference to Tiravanija appear in the work Totentanz. Morgen ist die Frage, by the company La Veronal, a creation that was presented at the Teatre Lliure and that brings together an installation, a video and a performance that brings medieval dances of death into the present.

There are many parallels between the medieval era and the present. If the former was a time of wars, plagues, misrule, banditry, insurrection, religious divisions and schisms, in the present moment, called technofeudalism by the economist Yanis Varoufakis, the feudal lords are the owners of the “cloud capital” and the rest of us are serfs, a new system of exploitation that causes inequality to increase. Indefiniteness and uncertainty reopen wounds, frustrations, millennial fears and become fertile ground for simple and populist missives. The medieval dances of death were a way of overcoming fear. The fear of death and insecurity; a fear that in our societies is also associated with the loss of values and an overreaction to ward it off through excess (of images, productions, noises, activities, opinions…). The final video of Totentanz, with an avalanche of images of an overflowing present (wars, violence, parties, masses, protests, genocides…), leaves us breathless. Perhaps this is the current way of neutralizing fears, with an excess of images and noises that hypnotizes us. While this state of shock lasts, censorship reigns with total impunity (the one that asks not to make compromising political statements, point out injustices or, directly, cancels).

But the dances of death are also a catharsis after which new things can emerge. The Middle Ages were not a uniform period, but between the 11th and 15th centuries the foundations of the Renaissance were laid, as well as a scientific interest in the investigation of nature, empirical knowledge and the phenomena of the universe. In the present, aspects of different moments coexist, the difference being that all those changes that in the past took centuries can now take place in a few years. It is essential to be attentive to analytical analogies to understand the current international system, but unlike how scholars of international politics or sociology would do it, those who can best work on these analogies are the artists who, in a free way, generate spaces for thought and lucidity.

[Article published in Bonart, March 2025]

Making visible for change? About institutional critique, institutionalized critique and constituent practices

The twenty-five years that separate 1999 from 2024 constitute a period of time that has radically changed everything. The Internet and digitization have transformed the world we live in: how we move, how we relate, how we travel, how we communicate, how we receive and disseminate information. The world of art is not left out. The year 2000 meant the transition to an inescapable globalization and not without negative consequences, and we are suffering from it now. Countless possibilities have opened up to travel and access everything that is happening on the other side of the world but, at the same time, this openness has diversified, multiplied and made precarious the number of cultural agents operating around the world.

Artistic mobility

The internationalization or the presence of Catalan creation on the international scene, in the twenties and thirties of the last century, had as its main milestone, first, the trip to Paris, in order to learn about the most avant-garde artistic trends and be part of them and , later, in New York. In the sixties and seventies, the diaspora of Catalan artists took this same route, in Paris (Rabascall, Miralda, Rossell) and New York (Muntadas, Torres). From the 2000s, the mobility of the artistic sector is favored by the ease of travel (with the cheapening of airplane prices), a little more moderate nowadays.

In the mid-1990s, international curatorial programs emerged at Le Magasin, De Appel, Bard College or Goldsmith, which involved mobility and the creation of work and exchange networks. The same happens with artistic residencies, which continue to play a fundamental role for temporary situations of research and production.

Without intending to make an exhaustive tour here, we will stop at some specific moments in which the will to be and do within the international panorama, with more or less fortune, has played a relevant role.

Exchanges and international representation

In this sense, it is necessary to distinguish between institutional representation and the cultural policies that make it possible and organic exchange, concrete people who live and work in other geographical places and who play an active role in the international scene, either on a personal level (we remember the role of “hosts” in Berlin by the artist Chema Alvargonzález or in New York by Muntadas) or, from their institutions (such as the cases of Martí Manen in Stockholm, Chus Martínez in Basel or Marta Gili in France ), without ceasing to be part of the Catalan context while creating links and fabric.

When we talk about institutional representation we have to go back to the creation, in 1991, of the Catalan Consorci de Promoció Exterior de la Cultura (COPEC), which explicitly introduced the axis of internationalization to Catalan cultural policy. Since then, actions have been taken to promote this representation, either through specific exchange policies, aid or the appearance of institutions such as the Ramon Llull Institute, in 2002, with the aim of promoting the outside the Catalan language and culture.

A review of CONCA’s annual reports, since 2010, shows how in the years in which the economic crisis and precariousness have not occupied the central arguments, the focus is on the need for internationalization and keys are provided for new models based on institutional coordination, strategic events and impact on training.

Whether from the Ramon Llull Institute, the OSIC, the ICEC, city councils or the Ministry of Culture, it is essential to promote through grants for mobility both for artists, professional critics and curators or galleries for participate in international fairs or also for the translation into other languages of texts about artists.

Desperate optimism

Another important aspect is the presence of creation made in Catalonia at biennials, fairs and other international events. Since 2009, the Ramon Llull Institute has been promoting the Catalan Pavilion in Venice, “the great event” of contemporary art, often with risky and innovative bets. As an example, we remember The Unconfessable Community, curated by Valentín Roma (2009), or Llim, by the artist Lara Fluxà (2022).

But, when talking about strategic events to promote the internationalization of the context, organized from Catalonia, we often start with great expectations that are not always met. We remember the Triennial Barcelona Art Report, which had its first and only edition in 2001. Recently, the MACBA within the [contra]panorama program dedicated a study to it by Antonio Gagliano and Verónica Lahitte Reconstruction: Barcelona Art Report [ 2001], with a precise diagnosis: “There is a kind of desperate optimism in the repeated attempts of triennials or biennials to define the present and plant their flag in the future. They are always somehow late for the appointment. The accelerated temporality with which the art system adopts and considers its subjects of interest to be exhausted only increases this feeling that everything grows old quickly. Now that the future has ceased to be the repository of all the unfulfilled promises of modernity and has become a source of planetary anxieties, what is the point of continuing to organize biennials?”.

Strategic alliances

The desire to join international strategic events is accompanied by the consolidation of these through the creation of “franchises”. We constantly see this in successful festivals in other disciplines, such as Sónar or Primavera Sound. This is the case of the presence in Barcelona of Ars Electrònica (2021), a pioneering event in art and technology that expanded from its original location in Linz to different locations around the world. Surely, participation in this type of event contributes to better local coordination when developing joint projects that articulate part of the sector.

Another example is the celebration of Manifesta 15 in the metropolitan area of Barcelona (September – November 2024). From its previous nomadic contemporary art biennial format, it has become a project to propose models for the challenges that cities and regions face. Very pertinent, if it weren’t for the fact that its definition and execution is centralized from the management of the Manifesta Foundation in the Netherlands.

The evaluation of all these initiatives is linked to the management of resources. A balance is needed when allocating public resources to events that are considered strategic, as long as they do not go to the detriment of the weakest part of the sector, artists and other independent professionals who, let’s not forget, constitute the most important part in the generation and consolidation of the artistic and cultural fabric.

[Article published in Bonart 200, September 2024 – February 2025]

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A Note on Hangar’s Text Collection

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Reflections on Sonar +D 2024

Sónar 2024: Expansive and Agglutinating
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