Art Madrid'23 – The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, Nan Goldin´s series at MoMA

 

 

"The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" are more than 700 portraits token in Boston, New York and Berlin between the late 70s and early 80s as an emotional and fragmented narrative about the intimacy, about sexual relations or not... between young with different personal, social and geographical origins... and is a landmark of contemporary photography.

 

 

 

 

The photographer Nan Goldin (Washington DC, 1953) found in New York the great theme of his work: the story of the emotional and sexual lives of a generation hit by the rock, drugs, and AIDS and, as a photographer documentary she decided to register this reality so close. She entitled the series as "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" inspired by the Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, a tribute to the lyricism of the street and survival. The Ballad by Goldin is also in its way, an opera dedicated to the downtown in which the protagonists are caught in intimate moments of love and loss, in moments of ecstasy and pain caused by the sex, drugs or violence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The MoMA exhibition is presented with the original formats 35mm accompanied by an evocative soundtrack that includes the Undergroung Velvet or Maria Callas and as an appetizer, provides personal materials from the archives of the artist: posters, flyers, documentation of the numerous occasions that she had shown the Ballad series. 

 

 

 

 

During these months, also live performances will happen because, originally, the series was conceived as a performance in which, with the help of his friends and protagonists of the photos, Goldin would project her photos as slideshow to illustrate concerts of, among others, James Brown, Nina Simone, Charles Aznavour or Screaming 'Jay Hawkins.

 

Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency opened on June 11 and will be in the MoMA until 12 February 2017.
 

 

 

 

 

 

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.