Elvira Dyangani Ose, director of MACBA, has announced the museum’s program for next year. An agenda based on seven major exhibitions by artists from around the world with proposals that give prominence to contemporary conflicts.
With the intention of dismantling the museum’s dramaturgy (that which tells us how to move in the spaces and how to observe the art that is offered to us) the exhibition ‘Poetic Intention’, which will open on December 13 and will last until the end of 2024, It brings together works acquired in recent years with pieces already in the collection and others on loan from other artists. A tour that accumulates 88 books and 127 pieces by almost a hundred creators, which break with the institutional framework and offer a space for reflection and criticism in which the concept and experience of art are presented as a generating and emancipating principle.
‘Between circles and constellations’, Bouchara Khalili
The Moroccan artist, Bouchara Khalili, brings together ten years of artistic production in ‘Between Circles and Constellations’, which will open its doors on February 16 and will last until May 21. A compilation of films, videos, installations, photographs and documentary material through which she explores the stories of liberation and solidarity that emerged through the anti-colonial struggle. All this with the aim of valuing their situation and giving repercussion to the stories of subjects who, today, are still made invisible by the contemporary model of citizenship and nation-state.
‘Literal Ballet’, Laura Lima
The work of the Brazilian Laura Lima will be installed for the first time in a museum with the adaptation of her original work, ‘Balé Literal’, which was shown only once at a crossroads in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 2019. Now , takes shape again in an unusual retrospective with the same name, which transforms one of the MACBA rooms into a large, permanently-operating walk-through device. A huge rudimentary mechanism that makes different pieces dance throughout the space, creating a kind of choreography of objects, and which will be available at the museum from March 30 to September 24.
‘Corpus Infinitum’, Denise Ferreira da Silva and Arjuna Neuman
The Brazilian philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva and the director Arjuna Neuman (who was born on a plane and has two nationalities) will present ‘Corpus Infinitum’, open to the public during the month of April and until September 24. An exhibition that includes all the films they have released to date and, from which they reflect on an interdependent existence, betting on a time and values that reimagine life in another way, from a multispecies perspective.
‘Inside Outside’, Nancy Holt
The name of the American artist, Nancy Holt, will finally take on the importance it deserves in the most ambitious presentation of her multifaceted artistic production, ‘Inside Outside’, which can be visited from June 29 to October 29. And it is that, despite being a key member of the “land art” and conceptual art movements, her work has been much less recognized than that of her fellow men. MACBA wishes to break this trend and will house a huge selection of his works, those produced between 1966 and 1992. Film, photography, concrete poetry, audio pieces, drawings, sculptures, and also large-scale installations that will occupy entire rooms within of the enclosure.
Most of Lydia Ourahmane’s projects are based on experiences that are close to her or even her own, which is why the exhibition that she will star in during the month of October and until February 2024 bears her name. Her interests range from spirituality to contemporary geopolitics, not to mention migration and the complex histories of colonialism. Through the art of video, sculpture and sound pieces, she achieves a language and a unique point of view, with which she brings the personal to the political field and the domestic to the field of history.
Daniel Steegmann Bangrané
Born in Barcelona, but established in Rio de Janeiro for 15 years, the artist Daniel Steegmann Bangrané, assures that the place where he lives puts him in constant and direct contact with the urgencies of the contemporary world, be they ecological, political or social. Focusing his gaze on the jungle habitat of the Amazon, he explores the affinity of forms between nature, art and architecture, in an exhibition, baptized with the same name, which will be available from October 26 to May 2024, consisting of drawings, paintings , photographs, sculptures, films and installations made from the late eighties to date.
As part of a series of small-format exhibitions that explore periodicals as a space for critical thought, this exhibition is dedicated to the analysis of ‘Revista Visual’, a magazine published for only one year, dedicated to experimental cinema. Founded by video artists, photographers, and poets; It was intended to open debates and reflect on the audiovisual field from a sociopolitical point of view and from a broad and progressive notion of the arts. The compilation of its first two published issues and a third that never came to light, will be exhibited during the month of November and until April 2024.