“1992. Capital status, exhibitions and critical strategies”. Península. Colonial processes and art and curatorial practices

“1992. Capital status, exhibitions and critical strategies”. Friday, 10 January, 2014 – 19:00

With the Universal Exposition of Seville, 1992, the politics of art and exhibitions in Spain was to experience a fundamental change of direction marked by the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Conquista. Using the moment as an obligatory starting point, the course of this presentation will zigzag between spectacularization and new forms of criticality- ranging from those which come about autonomously to those which arise through agreement or collision with the ‘Institution’ in relation to the colonial history and present of Spain.

The process was marked by a manifest bipolarity between the ‘Europeanisation’ of the State – Madrid having been Cultural Capital in the same year – and an ‘Americanisation’ recovering the historical link to ex-colonies via different exhibition mechanisms favouring coloniality. Such an apparatus was part of a strategy to promote ‘Spain’ as a gateway for Europe to Third World nations – the term ‘Third World’ being in use in the context -; it worked as a tool for constituting the Spanish state as a Europeanised site of reception for immigrants with the resulting repressive structures. Using this diagnosis as a starting point, some of the members of La memoria de lo colonial, a subgroup of Península made up of Aimar Arriola, Jesús Carrillo, Tamara Díaz, Juliane Debeusscher, Nancy Garín, Francisco Godoy, Juan Guardiola, Fernando López, Landry-Wilfrid Miampika and María Luisa Ortega, will be providing a visual and critical analysis and a space for discussion on the issues in question.

Saturday, 11 January, 2014 – 11:00

The sixth general meeting of the members of Península will be closed to the public. Work groups will be set up to examine the state of each branch of research and look at possible strategies for future action.

Península. Colonial processes and art and curatorial practices is a platform for debate which examines art, coloniality and curatorship in relation to the history of Spain and Portugal, the colonial processes of these countries and the latency of current power relations within them. The group collaborates with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and is made of of around 40 researchers, academics, postgraduate students and artists. The Friday 10 session at Bulegoa is the first public presentation of the platform, which was set up in 2012.

http://www.museoreinasofia.es/pedagogias/centro-estudios/grupos-investigacion/peninsula