From Tapiès one can reinterpret the colonial thought of ​​artwork within the West

Madrid. Imma Prieto is an artwork historian, author, researcher and tireless curator, and has additionally been the director of the Antoni Tapiès Basis for a 12 months, the place she continues with the actions for the centenary of the beginning of the Catalan artist that was celebrated in December, whom she defines because the most vital of the second half of the twentieth century.

Born within the city of Vilafranca del Penedès in 1976, Prieto returned to Barcelona, ​​town the place she has spent most of her life, after 4 years as director of the Baluard Museum of Up to date Artwork in Palma de Mallorca.

In an interview with The Day, He insisted on the concept of ​​utilizing the immense platform that Tapiès and his determine symbolize to reinterpret the whole lot, from the same old clichés that encompass the sculptor and artwork theorist to the persistent colonial thought of ​​artwork within the West.

–Why do you assume that Antoni Tapiès was crucial artist of the second half of the twentieth century?

–As a result of he’s at all times equated with the trident of Picasso-Miró-Tapiès, and I feel that could be a mistake, since whereas Picasso and Miró have been artists born within the nineteenth century and linked to the avant-garde, Tapiès was not. That’s the reason you will need to separate them and to focus on that he labored till 2010. Additionally, due to his fixed need to vary, break and experiment. At every stage he was in search of new means and methods of approaching a illustration of the world, which is in flip linked to a collection of sociopolitical questions that enable us to speak about this second half of the twentieth century.

When the top of utopias occurred within the Nineteen Eighties, with the autumn of the Berlin Wall, when he criticized dictatorships, particularly the Spanish one, however not solely. He responded via portray to the whole lot that was taking place socially and politically in his time. He was a dedicated artist who has a visible legacy, but in addition a textual one, since he was a prolific author. He’s a way more psychological artist than we think about.

–There may be the peace undertaking that I had with Jordi Savall.

–That’s proper. Jordi Savall at all times remembers that one of many nice classes that his lengthy friendship with Tapiès left him was the concept artwork will need to have a social operate, in any other case it’s nothing.

“The resistance towards the Franco dictatorship was very arduous and dangerous, as when it opposed the execution of Salvador Puig Antich or the Burgos trial…

He has moments. He began in a extra restrained manner, measuring, after which in a extra direct manner, responding via his works. It was very tough to not take a place at the moment, however he at all times did so from Barcelona, ​​the place he lived. He didn’t go into exile or stay in Paris or something like that. Clearly, doing it within the Nineteen Seventies was not the identical as doing it within the Fifties, however the dictatorship continued to kill.

Imma Prieto, director of the group. Picture Roberto Ruiz

Migration and exploitation

–On the event of the centenary of Antoni Tapiès, the façade of the Basis’s headquarters was renovated a number of days in the past with a piece that denounces a really present drama, that of migration and exploitation.

–Sure, sure. Partly as a result of at a time like this, the centenary, it appeared vital to me to rethink structure as a porous pores and skin. Pores are what let oxygen, water and historical past via, and that’s the reason we invited Serge Attukwei Clottey from Ghana, who in his work defends each immigration and the environmental scenario, however not solely due to present vogue or the urgency of the belief that the air has no borders and whether it is contaminated all of us breathe it. He additionally denounces that Africa has continued to be Europe’s rubbish dump for a few years. For instance, in Europe we’re very involved about not having air pollution in cities, and that’s the reason we promote using electrical motors, however with out pondering that for Europe to have electrical motors, in Africa we will need to have kids exploited in mines.

It additionally has to do with exposing how a big a part of Catalan modernism was financed by the slave commerce, which was a typical apply in Europe till it was banned in England, France, Spain, and so forth. You will need to say this. To stay in peace, one should take a look at the previous truthfully and nose to nose. I’m not making an attempt to level fingers at anybody, however issues have to be recognised and we should know what has occurred.

–Consistent with that concept of ​​decolonization that’s so current in up to date artwork, proper?

–If we discuss particularly about artwork historical past, I feel that there’s an extreme weight of the West. Exactly now, not solely due to a query of decolonization, however for different causes, we understand that we’ve so much to study and incorporate from one other manner of seeing the world, which is a part of different morphologies and iconographies. And that forces us to revise our historiographies, which have served to catalog sure artists. What must be decolonized is the thoughts, it’s the conscience. It’s the identical factor that occurs with feminism: it isn’t a combat between women and men, however slightly we’re all victims and all of us must be feminists, at the least of the feminism that I advocate, which is the one which seeks to acknowledge that we’re victims of a system that amputates us, as a result of it’s colonizing. We have now to search for techniques that aren’t extractivist with respect to territory, gender, race, the whole lot…

–When the Berlin Wall fell, what frightened you most was the top of utopias?

–I don’t know if he was conscious at the moment of the top of utopias or if we’ve considered that concept later, however in case you learn his texts and reflections, he does have a priority in regards to the components for managing the world. How can we enhance society and stay higher. However you additionally must assume that Tapiès’ method to Zen philosophy will not be from mimesis, however from angle, which was finally countercultural, very near the concept of ​​communism. He’s involved with the administration of the frequent and that human beings might be and have rights to be. The apply of portray can be that: a spot to be.

–That concept jogs my memory of the persistent presence of the cross in your portray…

–The cross is the synthesis of many issues, as a result of the cross is the division of house and time, the best way we divide the world; it additionally has a symbolic half for Christianity. However the cross is an emblem utilized by many cultures as an emblem of power and in an atavistic manner.

–There may be additionally a continuing in your work: the dichotomy between life and loss of life…

–That’s proper. He determined to be an artist when he was bedridden with tuberculosis and started to replicate on space-time. It opened up a world for him when it got here to desirous about time in a extra cyclical manner, pondering that there isn’t any one with out the opposite within the current, previous and future. It’s also a manner of transgressing borders, of going to different cultures, but in addition on an inner and psychological degree. So there’s a dichotomy between life and loss of life in all his work as a result of he faces each as a mirrored image; what’s life, what’s loss of life… That there isn’t any one with out the opposite, of the Eros and Thanatos drive, which is the grief and pressure with which all of us stay.