Art Madrid'23 – Joan Jonas in Fundación Botín Santander

 

 

Joan Jonas: flow or river, flight or route, in Botín Foundation (Santander) from 25 June to 16 October 2016, is the first exhibition of the artist in Spain since the retrospective of the MACBA in Barcelona in 2007, and always it is a good time to regain her committed, brave and absolutely personal work. "The performance art is the tool I use to build an object that exists only in time, which is reflected with my body. For me, performance art is a kind of three-dimensional poetry created live in space", as she assured in an interview.

 

 

 

Joan Jonas (New York 1936) is a pioneer in the performance art, experimental film and video installation, and presents in Santander a multimedia installation conceived specifically for the space of the Botín Foundation and in which the artist reflects about the complex relationship human being with nature and the environment, a constant theme in her career as research from other cultures and rituals (specifically, Jonas is an expert on Kabuki and No Japanese theater).

 

 

 

The exhibition, curated by Benjamin Weil, artistic director of the Center Botin, also includes a selection of videos documenting five of the most important performances of the artist: Lines in the Sand (2002); The Shape, The Scent, The Feel of Things (2004-2006); Reading Dante (2007-2010); Reanimation (2012); and They Come to Us without a Word (2015). This set of works gives visitors a unique perspective of the creative universe of this key figure of the New York avant-garde of the late sixties and early seventies.

 

 

 

 

She has participated six times in the Documenta in Kassel, she represented US in the last Bienal of Venice and she has received numerous awards worldwide. She teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 1998, and is Emeritus at MIT Program Arts, Culture and Technology, within the School of Architecture and Planning. It is an honor to meet her in Spain.

 


 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.