Two exhibitions that have just opened at La Capella, the art centre on Carrer de l’Hospital, show us two ways of understanding contemporary creation, that of the Sevillian María Alcaide, who this days takes us to “La romería de los cornudos”, and that of Pol Merchan, who explores the dissident meanings of fantastic and horror cinema of the seventies in “La pantalla mutant”. All of them can be seen from 29 April to 6 July.

The Espai Capella is hosting the exhibition by María Alcaide, which takes us into the landscapes of Doñana in a plastic research that has as its starting point La romería de los cornudos, a ballet that combines popular tradition and avant-garde. It is not strange, because it was created in 1933 by Federico García Lorca and Cipriano Rivas Cherif (plot), Gustavo Pittaluga (music) and la Argentinita (choreography), representatives of the avant-garde stage of their time. 

The ballet is inspired by the traditional passage of a village in Granada, dramatised in this choreography in a heterodox way. The same is done by María Alcaide, who, with the title of the ballet imagined by Lorca and Ribas Cherif, evokes the landscape of Doñana, the pilgrimages and the spirit of the area through the music, the video, the dance and the creation of the costumes. All this from a “hydro-feminist” perspective and focused on the uses of the territory. The artist updates the story and places the emphasis on environmental problems, the overexploitation of the ecosystem and the violence involved.

María Alcaide holds a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Seville, a Bachelor’s degree in Plastic Arts from the University of Paris VIII and a Master’s degree in Research in Art and Design from Eina UAB. She has been awarded the Generació 2021 prize and the Fundació ‘la Caixa’ 2020 production grant, among others, and has shown her work at the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin, the Frankfurter Kunstverein, the Cité des Arts and the Villa Belleville in Paris. In Barcelona, you may have seen her works at Can Felipa, at the Loop Barcelona festival or at Fabra i Coats.

On the same day, the 29th, a second exhibition will also be inaugurated at Espai Rampa de La Capella. It is the work of Pol Merchan and has a lot to do with seventies art and, specifically, with the fantastic and horror films that became popular in the seventies of the last century under the name of “fantaterror”.

In “La pantalla mutant”, the artist dislocates, rewrites and reconverts images from late-Francoist cinema in order to turn them into a feast of insurgency and disobedience. Dismembered monsters and bodies give way to the world of queer and trans dissidence presented by Merchan. He is an artist, filmmaker and curator of the Xposed Queer Film Festival in Berlin. His creations have been seen in art centres and festivals all over the world and his works are part of the collection of the Fundació Leandre Cristòfol and the Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Lleida.

If you want to see the latest creations of two of the contemporary artists who are part of the Barcelona scene, come and see the new exhibitions at La Capella, but first check the website for information on “La romería de los cornudos” and “La pantalla mutant”.