Expositions
Joon. Plastic footprints
Espai Transversal
The Marxist psychiatrist Francesc Tosquelles proposed displacing thought towards the feet because when we walk through the world it is essential to know where we are treading. Feet allow a territory to be read and leave their prints in it. But what happens if the footprint that you leave is not of human proportions but of hyper-consumption on a global scale?
Walking always leaves a trace and, at the same time, displacement constructs space. That footprint stamps its own identity (weight, position of the body, etc.). but the marks of singularity fade when the prints take on the figure of what we consume rather than what we create.
In 1860, John Hyatt invented celluloid, and since then plastic has been conquering the planet – a material that is at the same time essential and unnecessary, vital and deadly. Today, some 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year, and half of this is for single use, while less than 10% is recycled.
The acute global ecological crisis is not limited to environmental, ecocentric, or biocentric solutions that reproduce the tension between society and nature. An ecosophical thinking – such as that proposed by the philosopher Félix Guattari – points to a multifaceted movement that involves the political, the social, the artistic, the environmental, and the production of subjectivity.
These ideas are expressed in the work of Joon, with an installation composed of various elements that weave a particular connection between plastic and nature, favouring the interrelationship of the pieces more than individual objects.
Huellas plásticas [Plastic footprints] spurns narrative to become the evocation of a passage across the Earth. And as each step demands that we pay attention to the ground, the dispute over the symbolic value of the gaze in the space of art here loses its supremacy.
The installation forces the direction of the gaze to ask us how we see and whether we can perceive our own existence in the space and between the works. Basically, it is an invitation to practice the space so that a change of perspective can take place.
Queer ecologies. Naturally subversive aberrations
Espacio 0. Centre d’Art La Panera
Annie Sprinkle y Beth Stephens, O.R.G.I.A, Brigitte Baptiste, Liu Xi, Ona Bros, Karim Boumjimar, La Erreria (House of Bent), Joël Harder, Guiu Gimeno Bardis, Roger Bernat, Eva Chettle, Graham Bell, Alba García i Allué, Projecte Úter, Bárbara Sánchez Barroso, Alex Francés, Eulalia Valldosera, MITO Collective, Aina Mestre, Neus Solà y Marta Garcia Cardellach, Elsa Casanova Sampé.
The unnatural homosexual, the inverted lesbian, the degenerate bisexual, the grotesque transexual… These figurations show that there is an institutional, scientific, and political relationship between sexuality and nature. A relationship that determines our ways of feeling, thinking, and acting. This is the starting point of “Queer ecologies”, a group exhibition that questions the supposed moral neutrality of heterosexist discourses constructed around ideas of sexuality and nature and reconsiders the relationships between species and environmental politics from the queer perspective. This vision states that the destruction of the planet cannot be separated from gender, sexual, and racial violence.
If ecology was originally understood as a feeling of conserving a natural world that had deteriorated through industrialization, or as a technocratic politics of environmental restoration that ignores the responsibility of capitalism, today it is understood as an ethical and critical practice that constructs multispecies relationships based on the well-being. If the word “queer” was initially used to refer in a disparaging way to the attraction between members of the same sex, today it is reclaimed as a way of resisting heteronormativity and of questioning the fixation of identity categories (lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, etc.).
Queer ecology defines a symbiotic, trans-specific, post-anthropological, and anti-essentialist sensibility, and to a politics of hybridization, mutation, coevolution and solidarity between damaged bodies and ecosystems. Inspired by the biological exuberance of matter, this perspective shows us how to be less human and more bodies in constant friction with other bodies. Questioning the romanticization of nature and the capitalist exploitation of LGBTI+, queer ecology appropriates the discourses of unnaturalness that are used to oppress dissident bodies and puts into practice new ways of dealing with, understanding, and relating to the sexualized, racialized, naturalized, and enabled other.
Collaborators: Morera. Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Lleida, Colors de Ponent, Biblioteca de Lletres de la Universitat de Lleida, Museu de Lleida.
Extractivisms. 13th Leandre Cristòfol Art Biennial.
Bárbara Fluxá, Carolina Caycedo, Colectivo Cambalache (Carolina Caycedo, Alonso Gil and Federico Guzmán), Estampa (Roc Albalat, Pau Artigas, Marcel Pié, Marc Padró and Daniel Pitarch), FRAUD (Audrey Samson and Francîcco Gayardo), Gabriela Bettini, Ignacio Acosta, Joana Moll, Left Hand Rotation, Marilyn Boror Bor, Marina Planas, Paula Bruna, Raúl Silva, Rosell Meseguer, Sandra Gamarra Heshiki, Seba Calfuqueo.
The 13th Art Biennale Leandre Cristòfol focuses on the processes of resource extraction: on its implications, its contestations and its alternatives. With a prominent presence of Latin American artists, the exhibition responds to ecosocial crises with works that offer an antidote to the utilitarian vision of nature. The projects alert us to the consequences of a development based on intensive extraction and the commodification of resources in the service of unlimited growth and excessive consumption. Based on situated, critical and affirmative methodologies, the works situate life at the centre of ethical, political and economic issues; they reconsider the ways of valorising human and non-human life, and promote practices based on the common well-being.
Extractivism is a mode of production based on the privatization, extraction and commercialization of natural resources. This dynamic originates in European colonization, and in the exploitation of goods, bodies and knowledge this process entails. Today, extractivism is the operating logic of neoliberal capitalism, and is practiced by companies and governments everywhere. The argument that legitimizes extractivism is that it generates jobs and contributes to economic growth. However, it has profound impacts on people and ecosystems: it generates social inequalities and territorial conflicts; it contributes to resource depletion, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution; it produces large amounts of waste, and it strips local communities of their resources and territories.
The projects included in the Biennial demonstrate that contemporary extractivism is not only feeds on natural resources, but also by social, cultural and digital resources. Focusing on Spain’s colonial history with North Africa and Latin America, the works highlight the link between extractivism, colonialism and environmental degradation; they warn us of the pitfalls of green marketing; they speak of the extractive function of mass tourism, urban gentrification and information and communication technologies; they question the biopolitical function of landscape painting and the sculptural monument; they speak of the capacity for resistance of local communities; they show the restorative function of ancestral rituals based on respect and interdependence with nature; they carry out healing actions from popular culture, spirituality and the feminization of struggles.
Collaborating: Library of the Faculty of Arts, University of Lleida; research and development project “Visuality and Geoaesthetics in the Era of the Ecosocial Crisis” (VIGEO, PID2022-139211OB-I00), Faculty of Geography and History, University of Barcelona; R+D project “Sense of Place and Sociospatial Inclusion in Vulnerable Neighborhoods”, Faculty of Arts, University of Lleida (SENSCLUSIÓN, PID2021-123255OB-I00); Open University of Catalonia (UOC); CRISIS, La Capella Art Centre, Ajuntament de Barcelona.
