Berger, Akerman and Deligny, among the authors of 2023 at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge
Over the course of the year, the space will programme five monographic exhibitions and three group exhibitions, looking at fundamental creators in different epistemological, political and aesthetic ruptures.
The new season of La Virreina Centre de la Imatge aims to delve deeper into the critical recapitulation of fundamental authors in the various epistemological, political and aesthetic ruptures from the 1950s to the present, with special emphasis on those who operate in the expanded field of audiovisuals. Along these lines, during 2023 the space will programme five monographic exhibitions, dedicated to John Berger, Chantal Akerman, Fernand Deligny, Immaculada Salinas and Antoni Miralda, to which must be added three group exhibitions: The City in Dispute, Cimarron Antifuturism and Hard Lines. Buildings, Design and Urbanism in Barcelona (1949-1975). The latter will be held at the former headquarters of the Gustavo Gili publishing house.
The 2023 exhibition programme will kick off with two projects that investigate the tensions between the right to public space and urban cosmetics. The City in Dispute. Collective Experiments in Social Housing in Southern Europe (1949-1976) will present a review of social housing that interrogates how architecture and conflict have historically intersected, from the neo-realist reconstruction of post-war Italy, through the settlements directed at Spain to the SAAL experience in Portugal. As for Hard Lines. Buildings, Design and Urban Planning in Barcelona (1949-1975), co-produced with the Architects' Association of Catalonia (COAC), will bring together 32 case studies in which construction problems were given priority over aesthetic justifications and which, seen in perspective, constitute "hard lines" concerning the hegemonic trends in the field of architecture, design and urban planning in Barcelona in each period. There will be photographs by the main architectural documentarists of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, especially Francesc Català-Roca, who will present a selection of his reports on the Gustavo Gili publishing house building. The other group exhibition is Cimarron Antifuturism and will have two simultaneous venues, Santa Mònica and La Virreina Centre de la Imatge. There will be works by fifteen artists and activist and community collectives who have been working in a seminar/laboratory since 2021 to reflect on different questions about Europe.
The ground floor rooms will host, from March, Voices in the Forest, by Immaculada Salinas, a specific proposal for this space that consists of the presentation of thirteen unpublished works with the thirteen martyrdoms suffered by the martyred girl Saint Eulalia as a common thread. The pieces dissent not only from social conventions but also from certain sectors that criminalise desire and restrict gender. And in May will come Permanent Red, the title of the exhibition on the ideological repercussions of the work of John Berger (Hackney, London, 1926 - Paris, 2017), one of the authors of reference among those who, in the mid-20th century, questioned formalist interpretations of how images should be read from a contemporary perspective. Drawings, photographs, audiovisual pieces and unpublished documents will be on display from a museographic point of view, on loan from the English writer's heirs and various archives and collections around the world. And at the end of June, an exhibition of Antoni Miralda's work as a fashion photographer for Vogue magazine during the 1960s and early 1970s will open its doors.
First monographic exhibition on pioneering filmmaker Chantal Akerman
The exhibition dedicated to Chantal Akerman (Brussels, 1950 - Paris, 2015), one of the key authors of feminist and independent European cinema of the last fifty years, will be the first monographic exhibition on the filmmaker in a Spanish museum. It will open on 3 November. A pioneer in investigating the exhibition possibilities of film works, in the late 1990s she began to create numerous video installations that were exhibited in institutions and events all over the world. And the exhibition Legends of the Raft will bring together the experimental forms carried out by the French writer and filmmaker Fernand Deligny in Cévennes, in the south of France, where he established an informal support network for autistic children from 1967 until the 1980s.
La Virreina Centre de la Imatge has also announced, among other initiatives, the publication of several books for 2023: one by Pilar Parcerisas on Joseph Beuys; Gràfiques de la revolta, research by Òscar Guayabero, and Enfocades! in the framework of the centenary of the Agrupació Fotogràfica de Catalunya.
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