The composer Cathy Berberian and her famous composition Stripsody; the filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, Eugenio Barba and the Odin Teatret, Sergi Aguilar or the Vietnamese filmmaker, composer, poet and writer Trinh T. Minh-Ha are some of the names that you will find in this 2025 that has just begun at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, where the next exhibitions have just been presented. Among the first, the one that, from 8 February to 1 May, analyses the relationship between the critic Michel Ragon and a group of architects of his time.

All of this is part of a series of exhibitions programmed for the next few months, all of which have as a common line the exploration of the concept of rupture, analysing the works of different authors and seeing in what aspects, aesthetic and conceptual, they go beyond the limits of each period.

As a first stop, the exhibition ‘What’s after Le Corbusier?’ (pictured. Photo: Louis Monier). It talks about the critic Michel Ragon, admirer of Le Corbusier and inscribed in a line of anarchist and libertarian thought. He had a close relationship with Yona Friedman, Paul Maymont, Ionel Schein, Nicolas Schöffer, Walter Jonas and Georges Patrix, who in 1965 founded the International Group for Prospective Architecture in Paris. This relationship is the focus of an exhibition that displays a collection of documents from the Ragon Foundation of the University of Rennes, which deal with issues such as participatory urban planning, local agriculture, social housing and the relationship between power and the design of cities. Fernando Maza and Neus Moyano are the curators of this exhibition.

‘Poder Popular’, curated by Valentín Roma, presents from 28 April to 28 September the Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez (1942-1974), author of several documentaries and the unfinished film De cierta manera (1977; it was completed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, her mentor). In ‘Poder Popular’ you can meet this author for the first time and discover how she portrayed the Cuban reality of the 1970s, the situation of women and the racial and class tensions in the island.

Also from 28 April to 28 September, the Virreina will host the exhibition, curated by the dancer and choreographer Roger Bernat, ‘Autopenetració’, which for the first time brings the experience of the Italian playwright and theatre researcher Eugenio Barba and the Norwegian and Danish company Odin Teatret, which he founded in 1964, to a museum format. It will be a good way to get to know the relationships, influences and moments of tension between the Latin American, European and North American theatre scene at the end of the Cold War.

Do you know Stripsody? It is perhaps one of the most unique musical compositions ever created. It was Cathy Berberian‘s first opera and its particularity is that it was created from the onomatopoeias that appear in the comics. A specialist in music, Arnau Horta, will commission an exhibition (from 12 April to 28 September) entitled ‘Cathy Berberian. Stripsody’, which celebrates both the centenary of the artist’s birth and the singularity of one of the most unclassifiable compositions of the last century.

On the same dates (from 12 April to 28 September) you can also see at La Virreina an anthological exhibition curated by Valentín Roma and dedicated to ‘Álvaro Perdices’. It focuses on the last years of production of this artist from Madrid and includes both emblematic productions of the author and unpublished works that were designed specifically for La Virreina Centre de la Imatge. Teaching and learning free of regulations are some of the themes of the works you will see.

From 24 May to 10 October it will be time to visit ‘Contrapunt’, an exhibition curated by Valentín Roma that shows the work of Sergi Aguilar, an artist who devoted himself both to sculpture and photography.

The filmmaker, composer, poet, writer, literary critic and teacher born in 1952, ‘Trinh T. Minh-ha’ is the protagonist of the exhibition that bears the artist’s name and which will be shared by Valentín Roma and Manuel Borja-Villel. His film work takes the form of an exhibition for the first time in Spain.

Among the rest of this year’s exhibitions, ‘El retorn de la mirada. La tasca política de narrar’ which, from 18 October to 15 March, shows works by the artist Paloma Polo, focusing on colonial and patriarchal discourse, but also materials from her personal archive that are rarely seen. As curator of the exhibition, Mabel Tapia.

Memory, ecology, flamenco and poetry are an inseparable part of the work of the visual artist, filmmaker and curator Isaías Griñolo. In ‘España 360’, curated by Valentín Roma (from 18 October to 15 March) you will learn about his films and live cinema experiences.

The season ends with the filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) and the photographer Luigi Ghirri (1943-1992), two Italian artists born twenty years apart who have in common a work that invites observation, memory and introspection. The exhibition is curated by the art critic Frederic Montornès.

If you don’t want to miss any of the exhibitions at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge this year 2025, consult the complete programme on the website of this Rambla venue.