Walking on eggshells is too exhausting and I have decided to leave a few extra weights from this year that is coming to an end, so I leave them at the entrance of the room and at the beginning of this letter to avoid dirtying the floor. Almost everyone talks about soccer (almost) as if nothing. And I've been thinking about whether or not it's possible to have an opinion and also act as if nothing happened. I guess I can't, because I keep considering the World Cup as a huge swamp of hypocrisy and corruption, in the shadow of discrimination against women, labor exploitation and homophobia. And because if I had just learned about it, I would imagine that a World Cup is supposed to propagate sporting values.
I am very overwhelmed when I live uninformed, perhaps because of professional bias, but I am even more overwhelmed when I am aware of some information that hurts me and with which I do not know what to do, especially when they are repeatedly annoying, when they attract so much attention from so many people, when they involve an obscene amount of money. For years now I have alternated periods of connection and disconnection from that big dark hole that in journalistic terms is usually called "the news", often censoring myself if it is not necessary to be aware of it in order to live in this world with dignity. But more and more the idea is gaining strength in me that more important than being aware of everything, is actually being really there. And if I sacrifice something, it will be to be in everything. So, not to be in everything, I will stop being really there, because then it is as if I were not there. And I want to be here.
This is why, after soccer and at the beginning of 2023, we will celebrate, for the fifth consecutive year, our traditional Night of Queens and tarot. At tea time and on the eve of Epiphany, January 5 at 5 p.m., we will once again share a collective tarot reading to learn about the values that will help us approach the new year. Those people who wish to explore more about their particular situations, can access individual sessions with our main tarot readers, Susanna, Saya and Cecilia, who have been with us since the first Queen's Night in 2019. Together with them, we entrust our intentions to the symbology of the cards to start the year with clarity of purpose, with confidence to dispose of our personal resources and with curiosity and enthusiasm to live what the new year brings us. On the link below, you can register to access the general reading in person and the individual readings (online or in situ).
👉 👉 Remember also that next January 13 at 7 pm we will meet at the gallery with Laia Arqueros Claramunt. Faced with the need for references and to share the experience of her hysterectomy, Laia started a project that directly addresses what it means to be a hysterectomized woman in contemporary society. Her parallel crisis of identity, artistic and symbolic representation, in addition to the invisibilization of the issue, have pushed her to question the patriarchal narratives of the uterus and its mere reproductive attribution, as well as obstetric violence with productivist purposes.
Laia's feminist practice comes from the awareness of the collective component in personal experiences, and that is why we want to call on women who read us and who, hysterectomized or who have accompanied a process closely, are concerned about this reality. The meeting will take place on Friday, January 13 at 7 p.m. in the gallery to share a common forum of concern and to think together in a safe space about what we can do about it. You can register by sending an email to hola@chiquitaroom.com
👉 This week the exhibition Prelude, Poetic Intention was presented at MACBA, which includes 127 works and 88 books by almost a hundred artists and I'm very excited that among so many people there are three artists from the gallery: Teresa Estapé, Daniel Gasol and Pedro Torres. Their pieces will be shown in the second phase of the exhibition, which will open in the middle of the year 2023, understanding the show as an exercise that attempts to break away from the institutional framework and offers a space for critical reflection in which the concept and experience of "art" are presented as a generative and emancipating principle. Curated by the new director Elvira Dyangani Ose (in the photo), and Antònia M. Perelló Ferrer, Claudia Segura Campins and Patrícia Sorroche, this new approach to the museum's collection is largely based on works acquired in recent years that have been put in relation to existing works and also works on loan.
👉 Something that will also happen next year will be the double exhibition of the poet and sound artist Eduard Escoffet, which we are preparing in collaboration with The Green Parrot. This is Escoffet's first exhibition in Barcelona and is the result of two years of research into rationalist architecture and degrowth, with the background of experimentation with sound and everyday objects. The exhibition will be divided into two parts: the first, Fábula, at Chiquita Room, and the second, Acontecimientos, at The Green Parrot, and will be composed of different sound installations with which the artist addresses the myth of indefinite growth and the material limits of life on this planet.
In 1949, the film The Fountainhead was first shown, directed by King Vidor and starring Gary Cooper, who plays Howard Roark, an ambitious architect who wants to leave his trace in the world of architecture in spite of the opposition of his surroundings. Based on the novel of the same name by Ayn Rand, the film uses modern architecture as a pretext to create a libel against communism and, above all, a statement in favor of individualism and capitalist competitiveness. This is the starting point of this double exhibition project, which aims to address the role of the individual in a fragile and interdependent world. We will continue to keep you informed.
📽️ Today I say goodbye with a reminder for you not to miss the exhibition The heart’s eye saw something which the hand could never hold, inspired by the diaries of Maya Deren and curated by Sergi Alvarez Riosalido, with works by Judith Adataberna, Valentina Alvarado Matos, Marie Losier, Callisto Mc Nulty and Barbara Sanchez Barroso. This beautiful clip where you can see the exhibition from the barrier, is the work of our dear documentarist Luis Torroja. You have untilFriday, December 23 to visit it in person.
📌 If you have not subscribed yet, you can do it here.
🗝️ Privacy policy
We are sending you this letter because you have subscribed at some point or because we think it may be of interest to you. If not, please check your subscription.
