●Texts — 2025

«Pensar es un acto revolucionario»: las publicaciones de artista de Marie Orensanz

This text, published here in the University of Salamanca’s Umática online journal, analyzes Marie Orensanz’s artist publications.  After beginning her career as a painter in the 1960s, Argentine artist Marie Orensanz (La Plata, Argentina, 1936) created a significant number of artist publications in the 1970s and 1980s, alongside her sculptural and pictorial practice. These publications, … Continued

●Translations — 2024

Beatrice von Bismarck — Lo curatorial

El interés que me despertó la lectura de este librito en la edición alemana me movió a proponer que fuese traducido al castellano, con tan buena fortuna que acabé siendo yo misma la encargada de realizar la traducción, que apareció en español en la colección Ex(it)Libris, de  Exit Editorial, en 2024. «Lo curatorial, de la … Continued

●Self-publishing — 2024

Ensayo 7: Marianne Wex’s ‘LET’S TAKE BACK OUR SPACE’, a Case Study

The German artist Marianne Wex earned a degree in Fine Arts and subsequently taught typography for several years at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts (HfbK). Her best-known work, the research project and book Let’s Get Back Our Space – ‘Female’ and ‘Male’ Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures (Frauenliteraturverlag Hemine Fees, 1979), … Continued

●Self-publishing — 2024

Ensayo 6: Lotty Rosenfeld, die Gruppe CADA und Mujeres por la vida: Kunst und Feminismus in Chile in den 1980er Jahren

Throughout her career in 1980s Chile, the artist Lotty Rosenfeld moved from political action onto feminist activism, employing strategies for visibility and outreach that remained consistent throughout her career. Ensayo 6 was the flyer announcing a talk on this topic at the Central Library for Women’s, Gender, and Queer Studies at the Center for Gender … Continued

●Texts — 2024

The critical route of Manolo Laguillo through contemporary Valladolid

“‘The city’, says Manolo Laguillo, ‘is the largest of all human-made objects.’ The city, in marked contrast to the residential settlements of the rural environment, is also, without a doubt, the most characteristic habitat model of today’s world. And yet its close connection with the present does not exclude a burden of historical substance that … Continued

●Texts — 2024

The ARCO catalogue is dead, long live the ARCO catalogue!

“…Thus, the ARCO catalogue functions, to a certain extent, as a paper replication of the fair’s space. Although the correspondence between the large three-dimensional volume that the fair occupies and the much smaller two-dimensional surface that unfolds in the printed volume is far from direct, the fact is that one moves through the catalogue’s pages … Continued

●Self-publishing — 2023

Ensayo 3: Layer upon Layer (Christo & Jean-Claude / Shunk and Kender / Sotillo)

Ensayo 3 was the postcard announcing the micro-exhibition of the same name at the Terranova bookstore in Barcelona, which ran from March 10 to April 8, 2023. The Ensayos series was launched in late 2021, coinciding with the start of a wide-ranging research project aimed at redefining—from a feminist and, to the extent possible, decolonial … Continued

●Exhibitions — 2023

Off-Register: Publishing Experiments by Women Artists in Latin America, 1960-1990

Off-Register: Publishing Experiments by Women Artists in Latin America, 1960-1990 was on view at Center for Book Arts, New York, from October 5 to December 16, 2023. This exhibition set out to explore the creative practices of a series of Latin American women artists who, between 1960 and 1990, channeled part of their artistic impetus … Continued

●Exhibitions — 2023

Layer upon Layer (Christo & Jean-Claude / Shunk and Kender / Sotillo) [Ensayo 3]

This micro-exhibition included three elements: a poster featuring a photograph of the installation Valley Curtain by Christo and Jeanne-Claude (1972), a display stand holding a copy of the book of the same title published by the Museum of Fine Arts in Caracas in 1975, which was designed by renowned Álvaro Sotillo, and a facsimile reproduction … Continued

●Talks — 2023

Conversación entre Mela Dávila y Paola Peña | Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia

What have been the main publishing initiatives by women artists in Latin America? Why might one say that they have been “off-register”? So as to answer these questions, the National Library of Colombia and Center for Book Arts in New York organized a meeting where I had the opportunity to speak with Colombian historian Paola … Continued

●Talks — 2023

Conversación entre Mela Dávila y Sol Henaro | Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia

What have been the main publishing initiatives by women artists in Latin America? Why might one say that they have been “off-register”? So as to answer these questions, the National Library of Colombia and Center for Book Arts in New York organized a meeting where I had the opportunity to speak with Mexican historian and … Continued

●Talks — 2023

«Investigación / Musealización / Valor de mercado» | La Virreina Centre de la Imatge

At La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, the event After the Archive: Artwork and Document featured a roundtable discussion titled “Research / Musealization / Market Value,” during which I moderated a conversation between Brazilian collector Pedro Barbosa, art historian Manuel Borja-Villel, and Madrid-based art historian and gallery owner José de la Mano.

●Talks — 2023

Archivar / Exponer. Salirse del guion en los archivos de arte | MNAC

The Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya and the Museu Picasso in Barcelona organized an international symposium on archival practice in 21st-century art, bringing together archivists, curators, artists, historians, and researchers from the local and international art scenes. The symposium took place over two days and focused on two essential, overlapping actions: the task of ARCHIVING, … Continued

●Books — 2022

Mission and Commission: Documenta and the Art Market, 1955-1968

“Today, documenta’s independence from the art market is a given – at least, on the formal level, but this has not always been the case. There was a time when documenta was at the centre of a web of vested interests as diverse as the need for funding, the desire to democratize art, and the … Continued

●Talks — 2022

documenta Ost/West: Kunstpolitik und Kunstmarkt | Center for Art Market Studies, TU

https://youtu.be/MFvKZXxR1Sk?si=q5syrPtqmitmydbE How was documenta funded, what role did galleries play in this, and how did the “world exhibition” position itself within the East-West conflict? The workshop discussion (in German) “documenta East/West: Art Policy and the Art Market” by Alexia Pooth and Mela Dávila Freire uses these questions as a starting point to outline, through individual … Continued

●Talks — 2022

Ed Ruscha’s “The Books of Ed Ruscha” | Fondation Jan Michalski 

In the film The Books of Ed Ruscha (23’), directed in 1969 by Ed Ruscha (1937- ) himself, some of his iconic conceptual books are leafed through, unfolded and read by his accomplice Mason Williams. The books Twenty-six Gasoline Stations (1963), Some Los Angeles Apartments (1965), or Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966) reveal … Continued

●Self-publishing — 2022

Ensayo 2: We Want to Know

The second Essay is a poster designed to be folded and mailed. The intended recipients were, initially, the people who had participated in a simple survey aimed at gathering references to publications by female artists between 1960 and 1990. The front of the poster contains about a hundred titles that were identified through this survey, … Continued

●Translations — 2022

Linda Nochlin — Mujeres, arte y poder

«”He escrito estos ensayos a lo largo de casi veinte años, veinte años en los que he presenciado el nacimiento y el desarrollo de una historia del arte feminista. Cuando en 1970 empecé a trabajar en ¿Por qué no ha habido grandes mujeres artistas?, la historia del arte feminista no existía: como cualquier otra forma … Continued

●Texts — 2022

Un espacio tomado quizás por fantasmas

“…While artist’s publications know how to ‘speak’ about space in different ways, when they are part of an exhibition, they inhabit the exhibition space and interact with it, often problematizing it in an obvious way. Can an open book be displayed in a glass case, out of reach of visitors who are also its potential … Continued

●Talks — 2021

El que pot un llibre 13: «Apariciones, Enric Farrés Duran» | MACBA

Session No. 13 of the series of talks and presentations What a Book Can Do, organized by Anna Pahissa at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, was dedicated to discussing Apariciones, an artist’s book by Enric Farrés Duran published by the museum itself.  Apariciones had been published in conjunction with Farrés Duran’s exhibition Cosas que … Continued

●Talks — 2021

“Alchemie im Archiv. Was wir unter kuratorischer Forschung verstehen (können)” | Master Program Exhibition Theory and Practice, University of Applied Arts Vienna 

UNESCO defines “research” as “creative and systematic work aimed at expanding the body of knowledge—including knowledge about humanity, culture, and society—and at developing new applications based on existing knowledge.” When we speak of research in general, we usually mean “scientific” research, which in fact encompasses a very heterogeneous spectrum of working models and methods. In … Continued

●Self-publishing — 2021

Ensayo 1: El ensayo (polifónico)

The Ensayos series was launched in late 2021, coinciding with the start of a wide-ranging research project aimed at redefining—from a feminist and, to the extent possible, decolonial perspective—the canon that historiography has established for the artist’s book genre. The aim of this series is to present partial research findings in a variety of printed … Continued

●Editorial — 2021

Camiño Negro. Fotografías de Damián Ucieda

In 2020, María José Jove Foundation from A Coruña invited me to be, in collaboration with Juan de Nieves, the editor of a publication by photographer Damián Ucieda, in which Ucieda’s photo essay was to be presented alongside a selection of archival documentation illustrating the project’s context. “In addition to the photographs from Camiño negro, … Continued

●Texts — 2021

Magazine: BNV Producciones, Bulegoa, FelipaManuela y March International

Available on the A*Desk – Critical Thinking blog (https://a-desk.org/en/magazine/temporary-art-review-and-march-a-journal-of-art-strategy/) in English, Spanish and Catalan. Partially republished in March – A Journal of Art and Strategy (https://march.international/adesk-interview-by-mela-davila-freire/), May 2021. “…The slowdown in the pace of activity has been radical and prolonged, leaving many of us on the brink of bankruptcy and, what’s even worse, without clear … Continued

●Texts — 2021

Beyond This Point, Nothing is Fiction

The artist’s book Aparicions / Apariciones is part of the exhibition project Coses que pasen, in which the artist Enric Farrés Durán uses the institutional archive of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) as a primary source of materials and inspiration. For the preparation of this project, as with other people who had been … Continued

●Texts — 2021

Un espacio hecho de espacios tras espacios

José-Miguel Ullán’s writing, which has been extensively analyzed and discussed, has often been noted for the difficulty of pigeonholing it into currents, trends, literary groups, and other commonly used classificatory contexts. José-Miguel Ullán, in fact, did not write only “literary” poetry. Is the same true of his visual poetry, or of the books he collaborated … Continued

●Texts — 2021

Art Understanding, Economics, and Business Acumen: Documenta and the Art Market

From 1955 onwards, the makers of each documenta sought to offer insights into current trends in art and to document the spirit of their particular time. The exhibition and catalogue Documenta – Politics and Art (2021) set out to focus on the history of documenta in the context of the political, cultural and socio-historical development … Continued

●Talks — 2020

«Constructive Contact between Us»: Other Books and So by Ulises Carrión | Artpool Art Research Center

In 2020, the international conference Artists, Archives and Networks, held in Budapest (Hungary) commemorated the 40th anniversary of the foundation of Artpool, which had come into being as an independent archive, but had become, by then, an organization named Arpool Art Research Center and connected to the university. The conference aimed to map the cultural-political-historical … Continued

●Texts — 2020

Das Archiv im Museum

A very brief text on the current position of archives in museum institutions, which appeared in the publication Sich mit Sammlungen anlegen. Gemeinsame Dinge und alternative Archiven (Berlin: Verlag De Gruyter, 2020), edited by Martina Griesser, Nora Sternfeld, and Luisa Ziaja.

●Editorial — 2020

Institutions as a Way of Life

“Institutions as a Way of Life was a research project organized by Bernhard Garnicnic, Lucie Kolbcand Jamie Allen in the Critical Media Lab of the Institute of Experimental Design and MediacCultures, which is attached to the School of Arts of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, in Basel. The aim of IWL was briefly … Continued

●Texts — 2020

Museums of the Future: Between Promise and Damnation

The book The Museum of the Future: 43 Contributions to the Discussion on the Future of the Museum was published in 1970 so as to present some ideas on the expected and desired development of this institution. Fifty years later, in 2020, a “revision”, which took the same idea as a starting point was edited … Continued

●Editorial — 2020

Archives of the Commons 2: The Anomic Archive

This book brings together the lectures presented during the second edition of seminar Archive of the Commons II, which was co-organized by Foundation of the Commons, Museo Reina Sofía Museum and Southern Conceptualisms Network, and took place in Madrid in 2017. The seminar set off to review the role of the archive in contemporary culture, its metaphorical potential and also its possible use as a tool for knowledge and critical practice.

●Texts — 2020

Reading the Archive against the Grain. Power relations, affective affinities and subjectivity in the documenta Archive

«…Debido a su papel como directora del Archivo, de hecho, Ela Spornitz aparece mencionada en la web institucional, donde la lista de directores se acompaña de sus fotografías. Así pues, para ilustrar estas cartas en la conferencia que estaba preparando, solicité al Archivo su fotografía. El documento digital que recibí me brindó otra sugerente e inesperada sorpresa…»

●Exhibitions — 2020

“No Order, No Neatness. Books and Magazines from the 1980s”

1980 signalled an important moment of change at multiple levels. Politically, Western societies undertook a deep conservative turn, while market philosophy spread relentlessly to all walks of life, including culture and art, rapidly affected likewise by the “logic of late capitalism” enunciated by Jameson. In the arts, a number of phenomena coexisted during this decade. … Continued

●Talks — 2018

«El Universo (que otros llaman biblioteca): colecciones documentales privadas en Europa» | Arts Santa Mònica

The 5th International Symposium on Artist Books, organized by the artist publications fair Arts Libris (Barcelona, 2018) and moderated by art historian and curator Glòria Picazo, focused on artist’s books collecting. Participants in the sessions included João Fernandes, deputy artistic director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía; Anne Thurmann-Jajes, from the Center … Continued

●Talks — 2018

La condición de contorno | MACBA

The seminar The Boundary Condition: About the Archive and Its Limits, directed by Maite Muñoz, was one of the events marking the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Study Center at Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona – MACBA, in 2018 The aim was to examine the factors that shape the difficult definition of the … Continued

●Texts — 2018

Gesa Lange: Im Halbkreis Neben der Lampe

«…Tatsächlich sind die assoziativen Bindungen zwischen Gewebe und Textualität sehr eng: etymologisch stammt das Wort Text der lateinischen Vokabel textum ab, dem Partizip des Verbs texere, das „weben, flechten; kunstvoll zusammenfügen“ bedeutet…»

●Books — 2018

Legible – Visible. Between the Film Frame and the Page

«How is a book similar to a film? The range of back-and-forth relatioinships that can be established between print media – books, comics, posters, postcards, etc. – and cinema, video and other audiovisual formats clears the way for an extremely broad workspace, wich a large number of artists have assiduously traversed since the invention of cinematography at the end of the nineteenth century…»

●Texts — 2017

Modificar lo dado. La experimentación espacial en los libros de Francisco Pino

«…El corpus poético de Pino, aparecido en numerosos volúmenes de poemas y en colaboraciones con revistas, siguió desarrollándose por los cauces esperados para un poeta de vanguardia hasta 1970, momento en que, con la publicación de Solar —a la edad de 68 años—, su trabajo dio un nuevo e importante giro experimental…»

●Texts — 2017

Desfases del archivo: cómo construir la imagen desde la memoria (y no a la inversa). Tres casos de estudio

«El archivo, en sus numerosísimas manifestaciones posibles, es el repositorio por excelencia de la memoria y el recuerdo, herramientas indispensables en la construcción de la identidad tanto individual como colectiva. Entre los soportes en los que los documentos del archivo, a su vez, atrapan y fijan en el tiempo los recuerdos, la fotografía ocupa desde su invención un lugar…»

●Texts — 2016

Patrícia Dauder, 41°08’ 56.66” N / 08° 36’ 43.60” W

«The artist book was conceived together the work with the same title, produced for the occasion of the exhibition The Second Image, presented at Museu Serralves, Porto, in 2012. The work, an original drawing – graphite on paper – in twelve parts, subsequently transferred to offset prints…»

●Texts — 2016

Dear Reader, Don’t (Only) Read

«Manuel Raeder has been working on publishing and design projects for more than 15 years. He has run his own design office, Studio Manuel Raeder, since 2009, and in 2013 founded the publishing label Bom Dia Boa Tarde Boa Noite , a platform for challenging…»

●Texts — 2016

Dora García, Read with Golden Fingers (L’Innommable – Samuel Beckett)

“En la primera década de los 2000 Dora García inició una serie de obras, realizadas a partir de volúmenes de obras literarias, que ha proseguido ampliando hasta la actualidad. En esta serie, además de materializar su constante interés por estudiar los fenómenos vinculados al lenguaje y la comunicación, la artista pone en juego su habilidad para explorar…”

●Texts — 2016

El cubo blanco reducido a tamaño de bolsillo. La publicación como práctica curatorial y artística

«Venecia, mayo de 2015: la 56 edición de la exposición internacional de arte se inaugura entre los destellos de las cámaras fotográficas y el relumbre de los invitados vip. Pocos días después comienzan a aparecer, tanto en la prensa diaria como en la especializada, numerosas críticas y reseñas. De ellas se desprende que la impresión que parece haber calado entre los comentaristas es que esta edición de la Bienal…»

●Exhibitions — 2015

“This is the Cover of the Book”

The exhibition This is the Cover of the Book, which I curated together with Moritz Küng, presented ca. 50 books – artists’ books, photobooks and reference books – that are related in different ways to artists’ book publishing. The title refers to the seminal Book by George Brecht (New York, 1926-Cologne, 2008), published in 1964/1972 … Continued

●Texts — 2015

How to Do Things with Email: My Holy Nacho

«In June 2013, Jamie Allen and Bernhard Garnicnig took three steps to set in motion the collaborative, fragmented and remotely controlled project My Holy Nacho. To start with, they selected six different used objects that were being sold on well-known web pages. Then…»

●Editorial — 2015

“My Holy Nacho”

The core of My Holy Nacho, an artistic project by Jamie Allen and Bernhard Garnicnig, is “immaterial” work: remote, delocalized, triggered only by instructions sent by digital means. Over more than a year, these two artists commissioned various services from successive industrial suppliers throughout the world, limiting their communication to mere emails. My contribution to … Continued

●Archive Projects — 2015

Rethinking the documenta Archive, Kassel

In 2015, an agreement was reached so that the documenta Archive, which had been dependent on the Kassel City Council since its creation, would be transferred to the organization responsible for the documenta exhibitions. That same year I was commissioned to carry out a comprehensive study which would reflect the current status of the archive, … Continued

●Archive Projects — 2014

Lafuente Archive goes public

In 2014, archive collector José María Lafuente decided to make his public his considerable collection of documents and personal papers related to Western art in the 20th century. My contribution to this move had to do with developing a structure and the contents for the Archive’s first website, as well as establishing models for the … Continued

●Texts — 2014

Autor, actor, lector. El camino de la performance al libro

«La conferencia performativa es un subgénero de la performance en el que los recursos, la técnica y las herramientas de las conferencias académicas se ponen al servicio de la práctica artística. Las conferencias performativas suelen echar mano…»

●Exhibitions — 2014

«Autor, actor, lector. El camino de la performance al libro»

Autor, actor, lector. El camino de la performance al libro surge del encargo que recibí del Centro de Documentación de La Panera para realizar el capítulo 5 de la panera online, una serie de exposiciones en forma de vídeo dedicadas al libro de artista.

●Texts — 2014

Return Journeys: Documentary Threads of Art in the Lafuente Archive

«Such was the panorama at the dawn of the new millennium: despite the evidence of the inextricable relation between work and document in the artistic output of the 20th century, in Spain – and in Latin America for that matter – there were hardly any important bibliographic collections for documenting it…»

●Texts — 2013

New formats, new roles, new agents: Artists’ publications in Spain since 2000

“More than half a century has passed since the legendary 1960s, which are unanimously considered the era of the expansion and consolidation of artist publications—although, in fact, their beginnings date back to the Russian avant-garde, Futurism, and even earlier moments. It could be said that this medium has entered a new golden age: in recent … Continued

●Exhibitions — 2013

“Possible Forms of Action” – Book Showcase #3

Early in 2013, I was invited to curate and present Book Showcase #3, a selection of books which would be presented in the context of the exhibition Intervened Library, for which the curatorial collective Hablar en arte had invite a number of artists to intervene on already existing books, thereby creating one-of-a-kind artist publications. For … Continued

●Texts — 2012

Collection/recollection. The idea of collecting as editorial praxis

«…And it is not often the case that the collector’s activities are linked to those of the editor, although both, in essence, devote themselves to quite similar work: at the end of the day, what is an editor if not a “collector” of content carefully ordered and chosen from abundant material to be included in a particular context…»

●Archive Projects — 2012

“Territorio Archivo”, by Chus Domínguez, at Fundación Cerezales, León

Territorio Archivo, or «Archive Territory» [territorioarchivo.org], is a work-in-progress promoted by filmmaker Chus Domínguez and developed by Fundación Cerezales Antonino y Cinia [www.fcayc.org/en], Peñaranda Cultural Centre (part of Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez) [cds.fundaciongsr.com], and a group of so-called “domestic preservers”. The photographs that make up the family albums of the residents in the surrounding regions of … Continued

●Archive Projects — 2012

Joan Brossa’s Never-Ending Archive

The legacy of the versatile poet, playwright and visual artist Joan Brossa (Barcelona, 1919-1998), transferred to the MACBA Study Center in early 2012, is an excellent example of an archive whose structure simply blasts classical, straightforward classifications based on the typology of archive items. Brossa’s library, his personal archive and his art collection, impossible to … Continued

●Archive Projects — 2011

Muntadas’ “Between the Frames”

Between 1983 and 1993, Antoni Muntadas (Barcelona, 1942) interviewed 156 professionals from the art world, and then edited the more than 200 ensuing hours of video footage, cutting them into eight chapters that, in total, amount to around 40 min of video recordings. These went on to form part of the installation Between the Frames: … Continued

●Archive Projects — 2011

Miralda and the “Food Cultura” Project

Artist Miralda’s archive encompasses souvenirs, fragments of his art works, books, cooking and eating artefacts from all over the world, artist’s publications, contributions by visitors to his many interactive installations, photographs, press clippings… In 2011, Miralda requested the MACBA Study Center to help him create a database which would manage such a complex pattern of … Continued

●Archive Projects — 2011

The Archive of Photographer Xavier Miserachs

When the Catalan photographer Xavier Miserachs (Barcelona, 1937) passed away, in 1998, he left behind almost fifty years of professional practice, and an archive of over 80.000 photographic negatives. In 2010, it was my role to start a conversation with Miserachs’s heirs, previously approached through MACBA advisors, so as to draft a plan with a … Continued

●Texts — 2011

¿Es una obra, o es un documento? El Centro de Estudios y Documentación del MACBA

This text was published in the 10th volume of the “Impasse” series – published by La Panera in Lleida –, which was edited by Glòria Picazo and bears the exhaustive title of Artist’s Books, Special Editions, Object Magazines, Editorial Projects, Independent Editions, Publications Specials, Limited Editions, Desktop Publishing, Artist Editions, Digital Publications…

●Texts — 2011

SOME FEATURES OF A CONTEMPORARY DOCUMENTATION CENTRE. Case study of the MACBA (Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art) Studies and Documentation Centre

MACBA created the Studies and Documentation Centre, which opened its doors in 2007, to promote the museum’s development by extending its scope of activity so as to foster research on and the analysis of contemporary artistic practices. The tasks of the Studies and Documentation Centre can be summarized as the collection, preservation, and dissemination of … Continued