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PROCESSI 148. Artists and researchers in residence at the Real Academia de España en Roma

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Dates: 
10 November 2022 - 5 February 2023
Place: 
Front Galleries and Gallery B3, 1st floor
Hours: 
From Tuesdays to Saturdays (including holidays), from 11.00 to 14.30 and from 17.00 to 21.00. Sundays, from 11.00 to 14.30
Production: 
Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID) and Real Academia de España en Roma
Curator: 
Enrique Bordes

To mark its 20th anniversary, MARCO, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Vigo, inaugurates an exhibition in Spain called MARCO. Academia Roma. Processi 148, which has been co-produced by the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID) and the Academia de España en Roma. The show, curated by Enrique Bordes, brings together a series of works and projects developed by 21 artists who, in the 2020-2021 selection, had residencies at the former convent of San Pietro in Montorio, the headquarters of the Academy in Rome. The exhibition will be on display in Vigo from the 10th of November 2022 to the 5th of February 2023.

MARCO. Academia Roma. Processi 148 brings together projects from a wide range of different disciplines – that go from painting to fashion design, not to mention performing arts, photography, printing, video art, literature, music, artistic mediation, sculpture and gastronomy – into a single show. It is the conclusion of months of work, of ideas conceived and researched, of shared experiences that are the fruit of the yearly scholarship residency programme held by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation via the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) which proposed a group show for the works in Italy and Spain.

With nearly 150 years of history, the number of artists and researchers who have stayed within the Academy’s walls has reached over 1,000 and, as a relevant and important fact, this edition, the 148th, is the first ever to feature a majority of women artists.

For the upcoming months MARCO’s exhibition spaces of will be transformed into an enormous showcase for contemporary art which will allow visitors to explore a range of artistic languages in the museum.

Taking up the baton from the Azkuna Zentroa Alhóndiga de Bilbao, the programming of this exhibition at the MARCO in Vigo shows the commitment of the AECID and the Academia de España en Roma to continue to foster the idea of promoting and expanding to different venues the creative results of the artist residencies produced by the Rome scholarships’ awardees.

INTRODUCTION

Academia de España en Roma

Founded in 1873, the main purpose of the Academia de España en Roma, dependent on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, is to contribute to artistic and humanistic education through art creation and research.

Despite being 149 years old, it continues to renew itself as a centre of artistic production and expert knowledge. Not to mention as a meeting space for creators to develop their projects seeped in the tradition of its monumental installations (the former convent of San Pietro in Montorio) and in the constant innovation provided by a society both global and technological. More than 1,000 residents have stayed in the Academy in Rome and have generated relationships and an ongoing exchange that are one of the programme’s hallmarks.

For the past eight years, it has received aid for production from the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID). In this way it has become one of the most important artistic residences in Spain, similar to other key centres of international art production.

Through annual calls, the Academy has opened up to new disciplines such as photography, video art, gastronomy, new media art, fashion design, graphic design, comics and artistic mediation.

A series of improvements are currently underway to place the Academy's artists and researchers at the forefront of the institution, with the aim of turning the Academy into a leading centre of artistic production and research.

The Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID)

The Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID) is a State Agency, founded in November 1988 to manage and implement the Spanish policy for international development cooperation which aims to fight poverty and promote sustainable human development.

One way to achieve these goals is a Cultural Cooperation for Development scheme that provides different programmes through its networks abroad, the Cultural Centres in Spain and Cultural Attachés at embassies. Likewise, it has the powers of coordinating Cultural Action Abroad through the Dirección de Relaciones Culturales y Científicas. The latter is in charge of Cooperation and Cultural Promotion abroad, the internationalization of artists and the promotion of Spanish participation in important international cultural events.

Catalogue

A catalogue including texts by the curator and the artists and photographs of the pieces show in the exhibition will be published by the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID) and distributed by La Fábrica.

School Programme

With the collaboration of Obra Social “la Caixa”

Until the 17th June 2022
Schedule: from Tuesday to Friday, 11.00 to 13.30 / By reservation only: tel. 986 113900 Ext. 100/ 986 113908

Children’s Workshops

With the collaboration of Obra Social “la Caixa”

Until the 28th May 2022
Schedule: Saturday from 11.00 to 12.30 (3 to 6 year-olds) and from 12.30 to 14.00 (7 to 12 year olds)
Reservations: tel. 986 113900 Ext. 100 / 986 113908 / email: recepcion.marco@gmail.com

Information and Guided Visits

Gallery staff are happy to respond to questions and queries related to the exhibition, in addition guided tours are available: daily at 18.00 / ‘A la carta’ visits for groups are available by appointment.

Interactive Maps via the Vigo app

The interactive maps system accessible on the Vigo app allows visitors to consult exhibition-related content (videos, pictures, information about the pieces on show), either via beacons or bluetooth devices located inside the museum spaces or anywhere else via the map on your mobile phone’s screen after downloading the app, or on the Concello de Vigo website.

Artists

ARTISTS AND RESEARCHERS 2020-2021 (PROCESSI 148)

+ info: https://sites.google.com/view/marco-academia-roma/castellano 

VIDEO ART

IRENE DE ANDRÉS (Ibiza, 1986)

Después del descanso is structured around an analysis of the evolution of the concept of leisure, taking as its cardinal points organizations devoted to indoctrinating the working class under 20th-century European dictatorships. The first organization of this kind, the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro, emerged under Mussolini. Nazi Germany imported it as Kraft durch Freude [Strength Through Joy] which, after a major investment, would be transformed into one of the biggest tour-operators of the 1930s.

TXUSPO POYO (Pamplona, 1963)

Gran Hotel Nazareno, el cuerpo se hizo pantalla o las imágenes no caen del cielo, analyses the symbolic, metaphorical and literal displacements of Natural Science display cabinets, which were a pedagogical model employed at religious schools. These display cabinets contained collections of minerals, herbaria or stuffed animals… many of which came from religious missions. The Nazareno School, founded in 1630 by José Calasanzio, was the first school in Europe that was free and accessible to all. After almost 400 years of activity, it was sold for conversion into a luxury hotel.

PHOTOGRAPHY

TONI AMENGUAL (Mallorca, 1980)

ICONA explores how we relate to images and how they affect us. The city of Rome, a crossroads of three ideas, was the perfect setting for this operation. Palimpsest: Rome and humans as a product made by compounding all the preceding layers.  Panopticon: sight, seeing and being seen as a form of control. Scenery: Rome and its artistic heritage as a deliberate construction of power for social control.

MAR SÁEZ (Murcia, 1983)

Terza vita ponders the emotional experiences of the city of Rome at a time when it was overwhelmed by the pandemic. Both in its analysis of the notion of freedom and its seductive games and love pacts, Terza vita explores a main aspect of that active coexistence: the promise of a future. The people whose testimonies are featured therein reveal their desire for another life; a life that transcends the nostalgia of a secure past and the shock of the present.

PAINTING

NATIVIDAD BERMEJO (Logroño, 1961)

Cruces y naranjas: a coin’s trajectory when tossed into the air traces a vertical path up and down, an axis mundi. The cross and the orange could be the two sides of the coin. Heads, the pleasure of being alive, and tails, mourning the fragility of existence. The pandemic has intensified awareness of these two realities that come together in this project, which contains symbolic and formal connotations alluding to the vanitas genre and to carpe diem. 

SARA GARCÍA (Gijón, 1983)

El orden nocturno is an exploration revolving around hospitality and relationships with others. Basic foods, such as flour and rice, are altered by bacteria, fungi and yeast to provoke new textures, colours, odours and flavours. A nocturnal order is set up that embraces the loss of meaning and proposes a shared experience. One of the most rudimentary forms of cooperation and ritual allows us access to other forms of wisdom. The piece becomes active during the ceremony at which the food is shared.

ÀNGELS VILADOMIU (Barcelona, 1961)

Il viaggio di archivio is based on something which has not often been the subject of study:  the three months Humboldt spent in Rome. Humboldt’s “Roman notes” in his journal reveal this catalysing moment of his career. From what Benjamin described as “botanizing the asphalt”, he builds a “archival trip”, a plant collection a la Flora Ruderal: colonizing aqueducts, monuments and ruins. The more than fifty herborized species, pressed and indexed in april and may, came from two habitats:  one vertical and the other horizontal, they are spread out across the chaotic, organic Roman topography.

COMIC

YEYEI GÓMEZ (Madrid, 1993)

Eppur si muove, una historia sobre la escritora María Teresa León. Having spent more than thirty years in exile, she lived the last fourteen of them in Rome. It was there that she wrote Memoria de la melancolía, a book in which her struggle against progressive memory loss, both her memory and historic memory, became noticeable. This graphic narrative re-evaluates her work and deals with the layers of memory loss, a social neglect that acts as a persistent pattern, where one identity is being built while another is being eroded away.

MUSEOLOGY, CURATORSHIP AND ART MEDIATION

MARAL KEKEJIAN (Madrid, 1977)

URMA, espacio público y paisaje contemporáneo en la ciudad de Roma, expands in three directions within the realm of artistic and cultural management. Firstly, there is research into public space, into ephemeral and immaterial heritage. Secondly, there is the context of Rome and the Academia, which is permeated by the idea of time: history and tradition, pandemic present and fictional future Rome. Thirdly, there is a practical direction: URMA has presented five actions thus far.

LEIRE VERGARA (Bilbao, 1973)

In qualche luogo lontano: Roma is the title of the programme developed at the Academia as part of the research project by Bulegoa z/b Space is the Place/The Place is Space, which seeks to analyse art’s role as a critical practice offering tools to stop, look and attune oneself in the world, in order to produce situations, imagine lifestyles and create space. Structured as periodic encounters, it has taken different forms, such as presentations, actions… and the making of a shared authorship film.

LITERATURE

CRISTINA MORALES (Granada, 1985)

Optar por la luna: Una novela sobre arte y okupación, initially an exploration of three spaces in the city of Rome that had been squatted which questioned the theory and practice of established artistic and literary circles. However, it became, thanks to Covid regulations, a quest for people and small groups who were willing to circumvent the laws imposing lockdowns on houses and venues.

CARLOS PARDO (Madrid, 1975)

El tonel y la torre de marfil is an essay in its most whimsical and primitive sense: an attempt at order. It sets about proposing a hypothesis regarding reading modern fiction and to gain access it resorts to using an undercurrent of western thought, the cynics school. El tonel y la torre de marfil is not an exercise in literary archaeology, but rather an opus incertum. It wanders in first person through some of humanism’s critical places, both excontemporary and perhaps domesticated, in the ambivalence of which a subversive-able literature still finds support.

CULTURAL HERITAGE CONSERVATION AND RESTORATION

VIRGINIA MORANT GISBERT (Alicante, 1987)

Il risveglio dell’archivio fotografico dell’Accademia di Spagna a Roma aims to re-evaluate the photographic archive of the Real Academia de España en Roma from the perspective of contemporary restoration and conservation. The project has been through several stages – evaluation, restoration, relocation and digitalization – with the objective of improving future conservation and allowing access. To put into effect the archive’s reactivation, various steps were taken that are presented as conclusions in the 148 exhibition.

MUSIC

JAVIER QUISLANT (Bilbao, 1984)

Sinuoso tempo, ciclo para cuarteto de cuerda develops the “compositive principle of sound stratification” based on Scelsi, applying it mainly to the parameters of height, duration, timbre, articulation and intensity; as well as to the qualities of polyphony, and the technical and timbric possibilities of string instruments. It uses the stylistic premise of austerity, to be found in Palestrina’s and Victoria’s counterpoint, as well as their spiritual quality. The cycle seeks to recover the purity of primitive, poetic and ritual listening in order to attain the germ of communication and language. 

PERFORMING ARTS

MURIEL ROMERO (Murcia, 1972)

Resonancias ocultas is a choreographic project centred on making a dance and sculpture fusion. The choreography uses techniques such as movement capture, machine learning, interactive sonification and digitalization tools to create a piece inspired by the masterpieces of classical sculpture. What would a Bernini sound like? The fluidity-rigidity of his Apollo and Daphne, or the gestural tension of his The Rape of Proserpine? Using three different formats — cinematographic, theatrical and museologistic — a bridge is built between sculpture masterpieces, artificial intelligence, music and the body’s physical experience.

GRAPHIC DESIGN

GONZALO GOLPE (Madrid, 1975)

Verba Volant is part of La Distancia, a project which researches visual language and although launched some time ago, it was formalized during the Rome residency. It explores a poetic fiction regarding the origins of language and the evolution of English towards a “unilanguage”. From New York to Babylonia; from language treated as a science to a cuneiform tablet that looks like it was written by a bird; from Chomsky to Darwin; from language understood as a weapon to a mother tongue.

ENGRAVING

SHIRIN SALEHI (Teherán, Irán, 1982)

El tiempo sin derrota. The cracks in a fractured inscription on stone or metal, a collapsed fresco and a chipped bust: the pulse of all of them seems still to beat with the touch of an incisory hand, a crafted body. They tremble inside due to the essence of language: in the gesture of an incision, a body destined to disappear leaves its imprint on another material that may not perhaps perish. Transcending all the signs of a time, within the act resides a fundamental gesture of humanity: the desire to leave a memory for eyes and minds that do not yet exist.

GASTRONOMY. CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION OF CULINARY TECHNIQUES.

MIGUEL DE TORRES (Segovia, 1958)

El pan de la Academia de España (Spanish Academy bread) has risen literally in the air of the Real Academia de España en Roma, where sleeping, latent, bread yeasts were awaiting some dough, their nourishment, to colonize it. Bread is the union of cultures, it is an ambassador, it is sharing. Bread is a syncretism of Mediterranean culture and of Spanish and particularly Italian culture too.  The results are produced by a mixture of techniques that balance crust and a spongy crumb.  Thanks to the Taraxacum officinale picked in the Academy gardens, an amaro, or bitter touch is added, which is omnipresent in Italian cooking. 

SCULPTURE

ALÁN CARRASCO (Burgos, 1986)

Come un battito nel cuore, una genealogía visual del movimiento obrero en Italia, is a project that seeks to rebuild a specific moment of 20th-century Italian history, set between the magnicides of Umberto I of Italy (1900) and Aldo Moro (1978). In the Years of Lead the “tension” in Italy provoked instability and death, a new State mechanism took care to subtract meaning from the word “worker”, thus deactivating the power of identification of the post-proletariat who from one day to the next woke up to find they were middle-class.

ELO VEGA (Huelva, 1967)

De sculptura takes its title from Pomponio Gaurico’s treatise which stated in 1504: “In ancient Rome the imaginary population of statues outnumbered that of living people”. Today, one must add to that populus fictus the countless images populating the media. The title contains the wordplay “de-culture” or “de-strike”, that leads to a critical re-reading of sculpture, its mythologies and its mutations in consumer culture, that may identify concealment, euphemisms and camouflaging of the millenary violence against women, in order to visualize, neutralize, reverse, and undo it.

FASHION DESIGN

GADEA BURGAZ (Madrid, 1992)

Sarcófago, un muñeco, la copia y otros cuentos is a textile collection, and additionally a creative take on sculptures as models. The proposal seeks to reproduce whole bodies and body parts and to reflect their movement. These garments should dress a human body that moves, dances, is looking for comfort, the article is donned and removed, whether an outfit, clothing, attire, tailored, fabric pieces, fashion collection… It is not clear.

 

Curatorial text

The Academia de España en Roma, residence of the MAEC-AECID scholarships, has been located in the former convent of San Pietro in Montorio since the 19th century. Its meditative, living spaces, designed to build a sense of community, mean that each year a distinctive new group emerges there, intermingling individual art production and research projects.

Inside the Academy there is a small construction that grants meaning and background to its activity: The Bramante Temple, which is a reworking of the circular temple that was to become a hallmark of the Renaissance and a model for constructions throughout the world. An experimental building within a functional one, the perfect metaphor for the Academy as a whole: a place of research, creation and study. Go to Rome, be inspired by it and change everything – starting with yourself. That is the essence of Tempietto, of the Academy.

After almost 150 years of official activity, the Academy's network is ever broader and more complex, spread all over the planet thanks to each generation of scholarships, the ties between each year’s awardees, the constant addition of new advocates, the centre’s far-sighted leadership and the fact it is part of the extensive network of the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID).

This group of awardees lived their encounter with Rome as a shock. In times of isolation and lockdown, due to another type of virus very different from that of Tempietto, Rome appeared to be set on pause, emptied, hermetic. To this exceptional city came Irene, Toni, Nati, Gadea, Alán, Sara, Yeyei, Maral, Cristina, Virginia, Carlos, Txuspo, Javier, Muriel, Gonzalo, Mar, Shirin, Miguel, Elo, Leire and Àngels. Yet, despite the circumstances, twenty-one ways of looking arose from the meeting of those twenty-one names, which, for the first time in history, were a majority of female voices. Hopefully it is auspicious of new and better times ahead.

From an old convent fostering creativity and research (assisted by a temple) to a spectacular, liberated, panopticon, the MARCO – in Vigo, which, incidentally, is the same latitude as Rome.

Enrique Bordes 
Curator of the exhibition

Curator

Enrique Bordes


Doctor of architecture and professor at the Higher Technical School (ETS) of Architecture at the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM). In the practice of his professional work he deals with museology, exhibition curating and publishing – in particular photographic/graphic narratives on architecture and the city; he worked in this field in 2015 during his scholarship at the Academia de Roma en España. He is author of Cómic, arquitectura narrativa (Cátedra, 2017), Beatos, mecachis y percebes, miles de años de tebeos en la Biblioteca Nacional (BN, 2018) and, with Luis de Sobrón, of Madrid Bombardeado 1936-1939, cartografía de la destrucción (Cátedra, 2021).