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
In the summer of 2024, I was invited to participate in the seminar Artists’ Archives: Tools for Research in Museums, led by art historians and curators Agar Ledo and Juan de Nieves. The seminar was organized by the Museum of Pontevedra, and took place on July 7, 2024. The organizers described the seminar’s theme as … Continued
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
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
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
“A library is not the same as an archive: it lacks a system of hierarchies that determines the place that each book occupies within it in relation to the others. This does not mean, however, that any haphazard and disorderly accumulation of titles constitutes a library. Certainly, almost all libraries started in the same way: … Continued
“‘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
“…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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
As part of the public program accompanying the exhibition Off-Register: Publishing Experiments by Women Artists in Latin America, 1960–1990, which was on view at the Center for Book Arts at the time, I had the honor of presenting the research that led up to the exhibition at the New York Public Library during a conversation … Continued
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
“…The present publication is made up of two voices: text and image. These voices move in parallel, so to speak. The first one comprises an essay that reviews the political, social, and aesthetic coordinates necessary to contextualize the artworks gathered in Off-Register. A few of these works have inspired digressions into greater detail, denoted on … Continued
“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
“…Based on these reflections, the need was seen to give physical form to a hybrid, dynamic and social space, whose layout was sufficiently flexible to allow the development of certain functions of other spaces without being limited only to one: a classroom / a lounge / a projection room / an assembly room / an … Continued
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
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
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
On May 2, 2022, Museu Nacional de Catalunya (MNAC) hosted a conference dedicated to the photographic collection known as the “Iconographic Repertory [of Art] of Spain.” The purpose was to highlight the significance of this gigantic documentary collection, a large portion of which has been held at MNAC since 1970. The creation of the Repertorio … Continued
«”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
“…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
“…The documentary collection Queer Archive? (…) set out to map and document the struggles of gender activist communities in Madrid in the 1990s so as to prevent contagion and promote safe sex, especially given the dramatic lack of institutional policies tackling the health crisis. Researchers and activists Sejo Carrascosa, Lucas Platero, Andrés Senra and Fefa … Continued
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
“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
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
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.
«…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…»
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
«En sus horas de trabajo, Haacke se dedicó a observar a los visitantes y aprovechó para tomar numerosas fotografías que documentan…»
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
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
I curated the exhibition Legible – Visible. Between the Film Frame and the Page with the assistance of Maite Muñoz, while Ricardo Duque and Tiago Pina, from studio Todojunto, were in charge of the display design. Editorial Tenov, from Barcelona, published the accompanying book with the same title. The exhibition aimed to explore the links of … Continued
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
“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
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
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