Carol Rama exhibition in Macba museum (Barcelona)

Carol Rama exhibition in Macba museum (Barcelona)

Oct 22, 2014

exhibitions

There are few things as rewarding for a museum as recover the work of a tangential art figure, veiled and forgotten by traditional historiography. It is the case of many women artists and the case of the Italian artist Carol Rama, essential B-Side of the XX century avant-garde, whose art can be enjoyed in the MACBA from 30 October until early 2015. 

Dorina, 1940.

 

With an absolutely unique language, influenced by art brut, the informality, les Fauves, feminism and organic abstraction, Carol Rama (Turin, 1918) tries to challenge (with a long career of more than 70 years on active ) the traditional art narrative and the gender discourse itself, with a violent, subversive, sensual and polymorphic vision of art practice and of his own body. MACBA Museum it is not just "giving visibility to the work of Carol Rama" but joining her questions and doubts about the hegemonic concept of art and about the sensuality, the femenine symbol and the abjection. 

Apassionata, 1940.

In the 30s, Rama experiments with watercolors, lubricious, colors and stains to fill hundreds of papers with mutant nudes, tongues, genitals, eyes... with a work between psychoanalysis and the study the unconscious. After a long period, objects began to curdle in her work, ready mades, recycling, organic pieces, tires, nails, syringes, Arte Povera make her work even more pregnante ... more pornographic.

La Macelleria, 1980.

 

In the nineties, Carol Rama returns to figuration without losing their initial anger because, as she herself has stated on numerous occasions: "paint makes me free from the anguish suffered by what was happening to my family, transforming anguish in transgression... I was out. Contrary. Never lining up"

Carol Rama y Andy Warhol. Fotografía de Dino Petrali, 1975.

Curated by Teresa Grandas and Beatriz Preciado - feminist philosopher, specializing in Queer Theory and Philosophy of gender - the exhibition is an alternative file with wich you can correctly understand the history of art of the twentieth century as it is "an artist imperative to understand the mutations of representation in the twentieth century and the later work of artists like Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, Sue Williams, Kiki Smith and Elly Strik ". 

Carol Rama has participated for several years in the Venice Biennale (1948, 1950, 1956, 1993) and in 2003 received the Golden Lion.
 
 

 

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exhibitions

The CEART opens this Thursday, November 14th in the room A an exhibition dedicated to this master of photography, which will be open to the public until February 9th. The show includes one of the artist's latest projects, focused on the hard work carried out by the miners of Serra Pelada, an open gold mine in the heart of Brazil where employees daily risked their lives.

Immigration, poverty, marginal life, slave labour, man's relationship with the land, the use of natural resources... are issues that have always fascinated Salgado. From the beginning of his career as a photographer, his work has opted to give visibility to the most disadvantaged groups and to create with his images a vivid and impressive visual story without fakes. With a raw black and white, this author's work transits between photo-reportage and naturalistic photography.

And the idea that permeates all his work is human dignity. Salgado portrays employees, miners and gatherers from a purely humanistic approach that wants to value their integrity, their strength and their resilience.

“If you photograph a human, so that he is not represented in a noble way, there is no reason to take the picture. That is my way of seeing things.”

Salgado entered this discipline long after completing his studies in economics between Brazil and the United States, and a doctorate in statistics in France. But in 1973 his life took a turn, and he decided to start his career as a photographer. He achieved to work at the Gamma Agency and Magnum Photos for more than 15 years until in 1994 he founded his own agency “Amazonas Imagen”.

With the “Gold” project, the photographer portrays a harsh reality that takes place in the Serra Pelada mine, a name given to a totally devastated and anarchically excavated mining enclave, the world's largest open-pit gold mine, through which more than 50,000 people have passed. In the heat of the legends about the mysterious “El Dorado”, the enthusiasm for this precious metal led to the development of strenuous exploitation practices for the workers and to originate tales of grief and glory, of human victory and defeat between the soil, the tunnels and the cargo baskets.

The CEART exhibition brings together Salgado's full portfolio in his characteristical black and white and large-format photographs that leave no one indifferent.

 

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