Montaner y Simón: A Publishing House with History. Guided Tour
2024-03-16 11:00 - 13:30, 2024-04-20 11:00 - 13:30, 2024-05-18 11:00 - 13:30 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Tickets

A guided tour that aims to explore the history of the former Montaner y Simón publishing house, the work of the modernista architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner, through a visit to the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, the former main offices of the publishing house, and two closely related buildings by the same architect: the Palau Montaner, now headquarters of the Spanish government’s delegation in Catalonia, and the Casa Thomas, currently the Cubiñá designer furniture store.

Following the Sun: with Júlia Barbany and Petit Ibèric
2024-03-23 12:00 - 14:00 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Tickets

Following the Sun is an experimental series of sound and stage performances, presenting nine new sessions by young creative talents. The programme, curated by Carolina Olivares Esturillo, aims to promote the youthful, inexhaustible energy of artists to light up and give new life to Tàpies’ solitary sock that presides over the Museu Tàpie’s roof terrace.
The first session in the programme is Sala Combo. The Return. Featuring Júlia Barbany and Petit Ibèric, this is sound and performance improvisation. Like when we were in the treehouse as kids. Going into the ‘We’ve lost the ball and we can’t get it back’ loop, the sounds of grrrrrrr. Extended jam session, rambling stage play, upstart concert, the band split. The instruments are heavy—disorganisation is the key. If you want to be a good magician (a real good magician), press the button for the ‘Sock Terrace’ floor and float off in the ritual of nothingness with us. NO HYPE, NO BOMBO, JUST COMBO.

PARTICIPANTS
Júlia Barbany (@juliabarbany). A hybrid performer and stage designer, she situates her work in irony and within the limits of a performance style she calls ‘soft’. The central themes of her work are humour, reflection on performance itself and the aesthetics of failure. She is a member of Las Huecas, a mongrel stage collective in permanent retreat. A graduate of Barcelona’s Institut del Teatre, in 2019 she did the master’s degree in Live Arts and Performance at the University of Helsinki, where she began her career as a performer. She has been artist in residence at El Graner. Her current role there is assistant and art director for outside projects. She performs with the Societat Doctor Alonso company (FIT Cádiz 2024). With Las Huecas she is presenting Sobre l’amistat (Temporada Alta 2023) and is part of the educational team at MACBA, where she runs performance-related workshops.
Petit Ibèric (@petitiberic). After graduating in architecture from the UPC in 2021, he worked in different architecture firms in Barcelona and Paris, where he did the master’s degree in stage design at the École d’architecture de La Villette through the Erasmus programme. In this field he has worked mainly on urban projects for firms like Toyo Ito Architects, URBIMEC and Territoris XLM, but also in 3D rendering studios like Prompt Collective and Mentira Studios, as well as working on small alteration projects as a freelance architect in and around Barcelona.
Outside the architecture field, he has always been involved in music in different formats. From experimental song in personal projects (Petit Ibèric, DJ Temillas and Bimbo Bicasso Corporation, among others) to composing and creating the anthem of the Federation of Planets in the Solar System for the performance conference Official Presentation of the Gadgets for Our Salvation, by Júlia Barbany, and soundtracks for the short films Sincronicidad, by Jordi Clusella, and Calvario, by Lluís Margarit. In the last year he has devoted himself entirely to the world of sound composition and design with bigger projects, setting aside architecture but not forgetting what he has learnt from it.

Programme curated and produced by Carolina Olivares Esturillo
Design: Ana Habash and Ignasi Ayats. Illustrated by: Eduard Sales
Ticket sales through the Museu Tàpies website ant at the box office. Limited capacity.
Link to the full programme.

"Deu estius a Campins". My Antoni Tàpies
2024-04-03 18:00 - 19:00 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Antoni Llena’s Book presentation, with the author, Imma Prieto and Oriol Magrinyà.

For ten straight summers, Antoni Llena, one of the most important Catalan contemporary artists, visited his maestro and friend Antoni Tàpies at his studio in Campins, Catalonia. Upon return, he would put together his impressions of the artwork Tàpies had been working on that year in a notebook. The notebook would, in this way, bear witness to the creative process of a great artist, as seen by another who is acknowledged as both his disciple and critic. It also contains a body of intelligent, finely-tuned reflections on art, creation and the creative process itself.

On the occasion of the Tàpies Centenary Year, Editorial Barcino presents these mostly unpublished texts in a book that will be presented at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, with the participation of Antoni Llena, Oriol Magrinyà, head of Editorial Barcino, and Imma Prieto, director of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies.

Antoni Llena (Barcelona, 1942) is esteemed as an innovator in the context of present-day contemporary art. His work, distinguished for its subtlety and elegance, constantly challenges conventional forms and the limits of art. He has published many books on the creative process, and writes regularly in the written press. He is currently a contributor to the newspaper Ara, and has also written for Avui and La Vanguardia, amongst others.

Approximations 2024
2024-04-06 17:30 - 18:30 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Guided visits to the current exhibitions at Fundació Antoni Tàpies’ museum in Barcelona:
· Tàpies. The Zen Imprint
· Chiharu Shiota. Everyone, a Universe
Saturdays, at 5:30 p.m.

Family Portrait: The Traces We Leave
2024-04-07 11:00 - 12:30 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Tickets

How many times have you photographed yourself? And your family? Many times, we’re sure! In this workshop, we invite you to create a different kind of family portrait. We take our inspiration from the work of Antoni Tàpies to leave our mark on the canvas through footprints, imprints, trails, letters, etc. Ready to give it a go?

Antoni Tàpies and Universitat de Barcelona
2024-04-09 18:00 - 2024-06-11 18:00 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Combined visit to the Fundació Antoni Tàpies and the University’s Historic Building
On the occasion of the Tàpies’ Year we are organising, together with the Universitat de Barcelona (UB), a combined visit to the former home of Editorial Montaner y Simón, now the headquarters of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, and the university’s Historic Building, designed by Elies Rogent. Both buildings were built in the second half of the 19th century and are examples of an architecture shifting towards modernity, within a historicist style in the case of the university and early Art Nouveau in the case of Montaner y Simón. The visit is a chance to find out about the history of the two buildings, but also about the artist’s links with the university.
Antoni Tàpies’ relationship with the Universitat de Barcelona began in 1944, when he began his studies in the Law faculty. There he made friends with poets, writers and key figures in Catalan letters and communication, including Carlos Barral, Alfonso Costafreda, Jaime Gil de Biedma, Alberto Oliart, Joan Reventós, Josep Maria Castellet, Manuel Sacristán and Josep Maria Ainaud, among others.
Though he never finished these studies, his link to the university was reinforced by the events known as La Caputxinada, in 1966. Tàpies was invited as a well-known Catalan artist to take part in this clandestine meeting at the Capuchin monastery in the Sarrià neighbourhood of Barcelona, where students and intellectuals discussed setting up the first democratic student union at the university since the end of the Spanish Civil War. After several days under siege, he was arrested by the police, together with the other participants, and subsequently fined (the Supreme Court confirmed the fine imposed on the artist in 1971). As he recalled in his autobiography Memòria personal [Personal Memories], which he began writing that same year, “Entering the packed meeting room to great acclaim from the students was moving. It was the first time I had played a prominent part in a large event, and all this affected me a lot.”

Antoni Tàpies’ civic and political commitment
Antoni Tàpies was a committed artist in relation to the political and social events of contemporary history. While this positioning is to be found at the beginning of his career, it was from the second half of the 1960s that his commitment to the struggle against the Franco dictatorship and for democracy became clearer. Following the dictator’s death, Tàpies often sided with civil and political initiatives aimed at self-government for Catalonia and an amnesty for political prisoners, and showed his support for other oppressed peoples around the world, environmentalism and anti-militarism.
From the 1980’s onwards, demand for his posters from institutions and other bodies rose. Highlights in this context include the posters he created for initiatives set up by the university together with other institutions, such as for example Catalan Week in New York (1983), published by the UB, the Barcelona city council, the savings bank Caixa d’Estalvis de Catalunya and New York University, and the poster for the production of Goethe’s Urfaust in the university’s Paranimf auditorium (1983).

Preliminary work and the creation of Tàpies’ monument to Picasso
Under this title, in 1983 the Paranimf auditorium in the University of Barcelona’s Historic Building hosted an exhibition devoted to the artistic process in which Antoni Tàpies created his Homenatge a Picasso [Homage to Picasso] (1983), commissioned two years before by Barcelona city council. Homenatge a Picasso (1983) was installed in 1983 on the Passeig Picasso, near one of the gates to the Ciutadella park. When the monument was restored by Pere Casanovas in 2006, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies organised another exhibition in which his preliminary sketches were displayed.
Tàpies conceived the monument as an assemblage of art nouveau artefacts—specifically, a piece of furniture that combines the functions of a sofa, mirror and cupboard all at once, from the time when the painter from Malaga lived in Barcelona—with some steel bars running through them. While the piece of furniture is a symbol of comfort in a specific time and social setting, the bars—which suggest the industrial Barcelona of the day—represent the discomfort of revolt. The piece is completed by a pile of chairs tied with ropes and some white sheets spread out with phrases written on the bottom part, including one that translates as, “A painting is not to decorate a lounge, but is a weapon of attack and defence against the enemy.” The piece therefore sets out to stress the social function of art.
The exhibition was open from 7th April to 18th May 1983. It was organised by the faculty of fine art, which devoted a special issue of its newsletter to the exhibition. This included a plan of the pieces in the exhibition, accompanied by the preliminary sketches and several texts reflecting on the monument, illustrated by an extensive photo report by Francesc Català-Roca.
The opening of the exhibition was a major institutional event, attended by leading figures in the worlds of politics and culture at the time, including Jordi Pujol, then head of the Catalan government; Max Cahner, Catalan minister of culture; Pasqual Maragall, mayor of Barcelona; Joan Guitart i Agell, Catalan minister of education; Josep Maria Cullell, Catalan minister of regional policy and public works; José María Maravall, Spanish minister of education and science, and Tomás de la Quadra-Salcedo, Spanish minister of regional administration, among others. The university organised a series of lectures in connection with the exhibition, including one by Alfonso Pérez Sánchez, director of the Museo del Prado in Madrid, under the title Monument and Painting.

Doctor Honoris Causa
On 22nd June 1988, at the request of the faculty of geography and history of the Universitat de Barcelona, Antoni Tàpies was awarded an honorary doctorate, sponsored by Dr. Immaculada Julián. In her speech, the latter reviewed his career as an artist from its beginnings in the forties, mentioning his different stages and concluding by describing him as “an artist who, without being a teacher there, has been a master for many generations at the faculty of fine art, because of the value, substance and conceptuality of his work”.
One of the high points of the ceremony was an emotional speech about art and spirituality given from the pulpit in the Paranimf, dealing with several topics: the social function of art as a path for knowledge and a means of changing awareness and behaviour, the validity of certain spiritual and contemplative experiences and their adaptation to current needs, and the importance of the artist’s work as a contribution to the struggle against commercialism and banalisation. His speech, entitled Art and Spirituality, concluded with these words:
The point is, as has often been discussed, one thing is good spiritual or moral intentions and another is also to possess the set of qualities, or artistic gifts, that characterise certain personalities; in the end, everything that makes art truly Art, with all the enigmatic mechanisms, complexities and adventures that belong to it, but of which the “spiritual” world, as we have seen, never ceases to be the essential, inseparable foundation.

Bookings: visitesguiades@ub.edu
Comments: Comfortable footwear is recommended. The parts visited in the Historic Building of the Universitat de Barcelona are not accessible to people with reduced mobility.

Tàpies’ Chairs: Cabosanroque
2024-04-12 19:00 - 19:30 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Tickets

Tàpies’ Chairs is a series of multidisciplinary sound actions organised in the context of the Tàpies Centenary Year, with the collaboration of Pompeu Fabra University. The proposal focuses on the voice and words to create a sound accompaniment to oral memory. In this way, each of the thirteen sessions will feature a creator whose starting point will be the chair, taken as a performative object, linking back to the creative universe of Tàpies through the expressive languages and settings of the present day.
The sound action for this fifth chair of Tàpies, entitled Playback, is a proposal by Cabosanroque created exclusively for chairs: a dialogue between the sincerity of the materials’ sonority, the voice of the object and the artifice of its representation. Straddling performance and installation, the action plays with the idea of the materiality of concrete music, often related to the material informalism of Tàpies, revealing the tensions in such staging. Understanding chairs as sonorous objects and autonomous performers, the materials and chairs occupying the space are left to speak. For perhaps, in this regard, the chairs do not need anyone else to speak for them.

Cabosanroque is a group comprised of Laia Torrents Carulla and Roger Aixut Sampietro. Their work has developed in relation to sound and its performative capacities. In turn, their interventions question the spectator when it comes to inhabiting space, understood as physical, temporal and conceptual, as sonorous and visual. They are interested in artifice and its relationship to human beings.
Cabosanroque search for the tensions between disciplines such as music, theatre, the visual arts and sound, striving to open up the edges, becoming spaces in conflict. Their academic training (in music, industrial engineering and architecture) brings them to use technology in all their works, where it is always understood as a tool, as a medium and not an aesthetic, as an ongoing research project. They frequently collaborate with other artists and with thinkers and writers.
Their work has been seen nationally and internationally. In recent years they have shown at: CaixaForum + (2023), Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (2023), Cité de l’Architecture (Paris, 2021), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, 2020–2021), Centre for Contemporary Arts of Glasgow (2019), La Casa Encendida (Madrid, 2018), Schaubude (Berlin, 2018), Fonoteca Nacional de México (Mexico City, 2012), Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (Barcelona, 2023, 2016 and 2008), Sónar (Barcelona, 2018, 2015, 2014, 2010 and 2008; Frankfurt, 2008; Santiago de Chile, 2015), Grec Festival de Barcelona (Barcelona, 2023, 2021 and 2006), Festival Temporada Alta (Girona, 2022, 2019, 2016, 2012 and 2009), La Filature Scène Nationale de Mulhouse (2019), Théâtre Garonne, Scène européenne de Toulouse (2024, 2020 and 2019), Unidram Festival (Berlin, 2009).
Since 2015 they have been resident artists at the Fundació Lluís Coromina.

[Photo: Inga Knölke.]

Zazen. Seated meditation
2024-04-13 11:00 - 12:00 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Zen is a Japanese word derived from the Sanskrit dhyāna which literally means ‘meditation’. Zen is therefore meditation. As part of the temporary exhibition Tàpies: The Zen Imprint, the Nalanda Zen centre of Barcelona is organising an open session of zazen, the seated meditation traditional in Zen.
There is an art derived from Zen, from the practice of meditation. There is no Zen art. Everyone finds their own way based on their own experience. Meditating is experimenting with yourself; painting as Tàpies did is, too. The fruit of a mind freed from attachments and preconceptions to leave the hand free to draw. When you let yourself go, freedom appears.
There is nothing to gain. Just sitting, letting body and mind go. A thousand and one times. Nothing matters any more other than staying seated, letting thought go, aware of one’s own body and its breathing. Like this, sitting becomes a unique chance to observe one’s true nature.
This session will consist of two parts: the first in the form of seated meditation and a brief meditation while walking round the exhibition space, and the second part of seated meditation. The session ends with some traditional chants.

I close my eyes, seated in meditation,
a thousand mountains in the dawn.
The ten thousand concerns of the human world are in vain.
Alone and unmoving on my cushion,
in the vacuum, sitting before an empty window.

Ryōkan Taigu (1758–1831)

You can enrol for the activity either by emailing nalanda@nalanda.cat or on the day of the activity in reception at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies. The session is suitable for all kinds of people, but capacity is limited.
Attendees are asked to be punctual and to wear black or at least neutral-coloured clothing.

Art of Another Kind: Art Informel in Catalonia, 1956–1966, Catalogue Presentation
2024-04-13 12:00 - 14:00 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Art informel was one of the leading art movements in Catalonia in the second half of the 20th century, bursting with creative freedom and breaking free from the limitations of representation. Deeply personal and introspective, it embraced a wide range of painting styles — matter painting, tachisme, gesture-sign painting and spatialism — that dominated the European, and Catalan, art scene throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
The exhibition Art of Another Kind: Art Informel in Catalonia, 1956–1966, which can currently be seen at the Museu d’Art de Girona, is the most comprehensive survey of this movement in Catalonia to date and features many artists—particularly women—whose work has not been widely exhibited and who have received little attention in the historiography of Catalan art informel. The show also dedicates a space to historian and critic Juan-Eduardo Cirlot (Barcelona, 1916–1973), one of the movement’s greatest proponents, and pays tribute to artists Albert Ràfols-Casamada, Romà Vallès, Evarist Vallès and Antoni Tàpies, as part of the commemorations to mark their centenary years.
As a way of bringing the spirit of the show to Barcelona, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies is delighted to present the exhibition catalogue, which includes texts by Àlex Mitrani and Lourdes Cirlot, among others. The presentation will be given by the exhibition curators, Conxita Oliver and Joan Gil, who will be joined by graphic designer Jordi Ortiz and the director of the Museu d’Art de Girona, Carme Clusellas.

[Antoni Tàpies. Terra i pintura (1956). © Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona/vegap. Photography: © Gasull Fotografia, 2024.]

Following the Sun: ASRA3, Catarata de culos, Els Cundits and Irieix
2024-04-20 12:00 - 14:00 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Tickets

The roof of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies is to become an experimental playground for Opimelissa, a collective who cook, sing, dance and lots more. We’ll be following the sun with the gentle irony and humour of Júlia Barbany, the architecture of the catchy electrosong of Petit Ibèric, the philosophical canticles of Max Grosse about the life and lovesickness of an odd sock with a hole in it, the egodilirium of the sharp-penned dramatist and writer Berta Prieto (if you don’t know who she is yet, you’re living in a cave!), the rhythm of DJ, performer and militant for self-governance Meritxell de Soto, the overflowing energy of tender, multi-faceted punkmother Belén Barenys, the experimental Latin music of Deprerreo, the contorted body of Candela Capitán, who denounces the sexualisation of women through convulsive metrics.
Second session of the programme Following the Sun, an experimental series of sound and stage performances, presenting nine new sessions by young creative talents. The programme, curated and produced by Carolina Olivares Esturillo, aims to promote the youthful, inexhaustible energy of artists to light up and give new life to Tàpies’ solitary sock that presides over the Fundació’s roof terrace.

Segunda sesión: THE VOICE OF FUNKOPOPS, with ASRA3

Guests: CATARATA DE CULOS + ELS CUNDITS + IRIEIX
Unpublished and surprising performance concert by the great ASRA who presents his latest current album titled “mami ençengui la ñocla”. Socks roll for FUNKOPOPS. They’re going to give it our all and more.
Voices and experiments from the great event by:
· Nasty Dalsy: voice, keyboard
· Sarigueyax: voice, keyboard, bass
· Voldo: voice, guitar
· PAVOROTTI FUERTE: voice, keyboard
· Gusanito Rally: voice, he helps make the dolls talk
· Jaumetmandril666: guitar, voice
· rikamichie: voice
· azombike: voice, bass
· blanc nua: voice, keyboard
· Irieix: potatoes

ASRA3
Singer, DJ and prod. with eclectic, humorous, ethereal and experimental tendencies. He is a member of the musical groups Els Cundits and Catarata De Culos, both lyrically and stylistically pioneers of music in Catalan. He is responsible for the queerfriendly alternative parties Desacato Goblin, where cultural movements are devirtualized, already having 47 editions in 2 years, held in venues such as Razzmatazz, Dabadaba, Sala X, Siroco, Upload, Electropura and more. He also participates in the organization of the Opi Melissa anxiolytic musical play library, a generally daytime, multidisciplinary and interactive experience that includes food, visuals and soft surfaces to lie on. It has been held at La Infinita and the CCCB. The gratitude of his assistants indicates that proposals like this are necessary and relevant.

Programme curated and produced by Carolina Olivares Esturillo
Design: Ana Habash and Ignasi Ayats. Illustrated by: Eduard Sales
Ticket sales through the Fundació website and at the box office. Limited capacity

Link to the full programme.

Today is Tàpies. Marcelo Expósito - Anna Pacheco
2024-04-30 18:00 - 19:00 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Tickets

Organised by the Fundació Antoni Tàpies as part of the Tàpies Centenary Year, Today is Tàpies is a series of transgenerational and interdisciplinary conversations conducted and moderated by the cultural journalist Rita Roig (Terrassa, 1997). The aim is to interpret Tàpies’ texts as a starting point for reflecting on current issues such as ecology, the right to self-determination, interculturality and political commitment in art.
The words and ideas of the artist will be revisited during a series of thirteen sessions, with invited participants from different generations and diverse professional fields (culture, education, science, politics, environment, health and human sciences) helping to construct a polyphonic story that will be collected in the form of a podcast. Thanks to the collaboration of Catalunya Ràdio, the podcast will allow us to experience the generated knowledge in another format and in another context.

CHAPTER 5. POLITICS, FREEDOM AND OTHER CONTRADICTIONS
‘It is often said that important culture is left wing’, said Tàpies. Before this affirmation, he wondered what type of left do we refer to when we make such assertions. Because, is culture intrinsically radical and transformative? Does the left really believe in a progressive and revolutionary art? In this conversation, Anna Pacheco and Marcelo Expósito will talk about ideology and aesthetics, the social function of art and what type of culture should we be fighting for to defend our social rights.

PARTICIPANTS
Marcelo Expósito is an artist, political activist and cultural critic. His artwork has been shown in museums, festivals and art centres, and he is the author of around twenty articles, such as Walter Benjamin, productivista (2013), Conversación con Manuel Borja-Villel (2015) and Discursos plebeyos (2019). As a political activist, for the last three decades he has participated in social movements for democratic radicalisation, in civil platforms such as the 15-M Movement, Real Democracy Now and Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (PAH). He was an elected member of the Cortes Generales (Spanish Parliament) from 2016 to 2019.

Anna Pacheco is a journalist and writer. Her articles focus on social issues such as housing, work, feminisms and popular culture from a class and gender perspective. She has contributed to publications such as Vice, Playground, La Marea, El País and El Diario, and co-presents the programme Ciberlocutorio at Radio Primavera Sound. She has taken part in various anthologies, such as the feminist texts Aquí estamos (2019) and is the author of the book Listas, guapas, limpias (2019).

Today is Tàpies programme
Podcasts Today is Tàpies, by Catalunya Ràdio.

Thread and memory: family workshop of memories and stories
2024-05-04 11:00 - 12:30 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Tickets

Participative workshop through which we will connect personal stories, and to transform a space of the Fundació based on memories and emotions.
By 3ART (Dimas Fàbregas, Marco Fragoso and Toni Vila).

Seminar "Memory and Trauma"
2024-05-08 18:00 - 20:30 UTC
Sold Out

With the Fundación Rādika
Session dedicated to exploring memory, beyond neural connections and the brain, as a dynamic structure connected to breathing, and trauma as an undigested and inherited experience. This seminar will feature the participation of Nazareth Castellanos, neuroscience researcher, Mario Salvador, psychologist and psychotherapist, and Maria Macaya, founder and president of Rādika, dedicated to giving voice to mental and emotional health issues.

PROGRAMME
6 p.m. Presentation of the seminar by Imma Prieto and Maria Macaya
6:15 p.m. Conference “The knots of memory” by Nazareth Castellanos
Memory is based on the neural threads or connections of brain structures such as the hippocampus. However, far from being a memory storage process, is dynamic and presents certain knots and creates false memories that are forgotten as a result of mental agitation. Beyond the brain, memory also depends on breathing.
18:45 Break
7 p.m. Conference “The transgenerational inheritance of trauma”
Trauma is a silenced scream and unmetabolized pain. The experience that could not be digested by our ancestors is transmitted to subsequent generations, both through epigenetic inheritance and later in relationships. We have a personal history and a prehistory that precedes us, our identity does not begin in our life but rather we are a continuation of the history of our lineage.
Mario Salvador
7:30 p.m. Discussion and open question session
20.15 h. Final

PARTICIPANTS
Nazareth Castellanos
She has been researching and teaching in the field of neuroscience for more than twenty years. Graduate in Theoretical Physics and Doctor of Medicine from the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM). Master in Mathematics applied to biology and Master in Neurosciences from the Faculty of Medicine of the UAM.
She has worked as a researcher and teacher in the Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience laboratory at the CTB (Complutense and Polytechnic University of Madrid), at the Max Planck brain research institute in Frankfurt and at Kings College in London. Currently, she directs research at the Nirakara – Lab and the UAM chair, Mindfulness and Cognitive Sciences. She has published more than fifty articles on international scientific journals and collaborated on university books. She also teaches classes at Spanish, German, English and American universities.
More than ten years ago she began teaching neuroscience courses for the general public. Learning to disseminate this technical knowledge has been one of the great learnings of her career since it involves thinking about the impact of what she does in the laboratory. She wonders if we could know ourselves from the study of the brain.

Mario Salvador
Psychologist and specialist in clinical psychology, he is co-director of ALECE, Institute of Integrative Psychotherapy of Trauma and of Brainspotting Spain. With forty years of experience in the practice of psychotherapy, is an International Trainer in Trauma Integration and Reprocessing Psychotherapy, Aleceia Model, Transactional Analyst (EATA-ITAA), Trainer and Supervisor in Brainspotting by BTI, Co-creator, trainer and supervisor in Aleceia Model of Trauma Reprocessing.
Currently, he is president of the Spanish Brainspotting Association and Treasurer of the Ibero-American Psychotrauma Association (AIBAPT). He co-directs and is one of the main teachers of the Aleceia Model Trauma Reprocessing Psychotherapy program at the Aleces Institute and an international teacher in Brazil, Italy, Slovenia, Ecuador, Romania, Russia and Austria. He is also the author of the books Beyond the self. Finding our essence in healing trauma and Who I am? From Dissociation to Integration, co-author of the book The power of Brainspotting and author of several articles in the area of ​​psychological trauma.

Maria Macaya
With a degree in Art History and International Relations from Tufts University and in Creative Writing from Stanford University, a master’s degree in Art Criticism from Columbia University, she founded Rādika in 2016 with the intention of giving a voice to mental and emotional health and provide knowledge and tools for well-being. Through the Rādika platform, she offers courses and training and interviews with professionals dedicated to relieving emotional and mental distress.
Macaya specializes in trauma and trauma-sensitive yoga. She is certified in Gabor Maté’s Compassionate Inquiry professional program, has a 300-hour certification from the Center for Trauma and Embodiment in Brookline, Massachusetts, in the TCTSY methodology and in the advanced programme from the Center for Yoga and Trauma Recovery in San Francisco. She is also certified in addictions and recovery with Stanford University and has studied neuroscience with King’s College. She is also a Jivamukti 800 hour advanced yoga teacher and trains teachers at this school.
Currently, she is undergoing training in contemplative accompaniment in death.

Tàpies’ Chairs: Joana Gomila
2024-05-10 19:00 - 19:30 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Tickets

Tàpies’ Chairs is a series of multidisciplinary sound actions organised in the context of the Tàpies Centenary Year, with the collaboration of Pompeu Fabra University. The proposal focuses on the voice and words to create a sound accompaniment to oral memory. In this way, each of the thirteen sessions will feature a creator whose starting point will be the chair, taken as a performative object, linking back to the creative universe of Tàpies through the expressive languages and settings of the present day.
The action of the sixth chair of Tàpies is We Hear I, by Joana Gomila. In recent months, Gomila has travelled with a homemade microphone (placed on a cork), a small guitar, a chair and the Ursula K. Le Guin version of the Tao Te Ching. Over the course of her journey, she has sought out places to stay, which at first were churches and chapels. During the process, she has found shelter in gardens, coves, caves and farmers’ fields. The goal of her travels was to read a poem from the Tao, then do a vocal improvisation-meditation that would make her at one with herself for ten minutes at each place of refuge. From the material arising from this, Gomila has made a selection comprising the basis for this living installation, conceived to be shown at the Fundació Antoni Tàpìes. Oïm (We Hear) means paying attention to what we sense with our ears. Oïm means to listen actively, willingly, involving ourselves in our surroundings.

Joana Gomila is a musician, singer and composer, and is co-director of the Suralita centre for creation. In her album projects Folk Souvenir, Paradís and Així Deçà (the latter two with Laia Vallès), she has been inspired by the sensitive material of tradition, along with improvisation, experimentation and thought, conceived as a living, musical approach to things. Gomila won the 2020 Altaveu Award, the Ciutat de Palma Award in 2017 (for Folk Souvenir) and 2020 (for Paradís), the Enderrock Critics’ Award in 2020 (for Paradís) and the Bartomeu Rosselló-Pòrcel Award of the OCB in 2018.
Since 2012, Gomila has created the music and soundscapes of many shows documentaries. She has worked with Lali Ayguadé, Andrés Lima, Els Escarlata, Hotel iocandi, Mariantònia Oliver and Cesc Mulet, amongst others. She has also collaborated with numerous musicians, including Joan Miquel Oliver, James Acaster, Miquel Serra, Iago Aguado, Marcel·lí Bayer, Toni Vaquer, Celeste Alías and Anna Subirana.
“I am an unsettled person, a musician, and my experimental urges connect with my love for popular music and sound archives, which I have been fortunate to be able to locate and research through my duo with Laia Vallès. I also have ties to and great love for the performing arts, and often compose music for dance, the circus, cinema and other unclassifiable expressive languages. I need to be able to dream and imagine futures with the people close to me, surrounded by a human flux able to constantly enliven my spirit.”

Presence and Space
2024-05-15 17:00 - 19:00 UTC | Auditori de la Fundació Antoni Tàpies
Tickets

This workshop, conducted by Roger Sans from MUOM and conceptually linked to the exhibition Tàpies: The Zen Imprint, will be organised in two parts.
The first part will be dedicated to spontaneous singing as an expression of presence and to the connection between presence, movement, gesture and spontaneous singing.
The second part of the workshop will conceive space as interdependence and harmony using collective singing, leading to listening in a group and the harmonisation of the group and the circle of voices.
MUOM is an overtone singing vocal ensemble based in Barcelona, with wide experience in singing education and a range of activities so that anyone who wishes can acquire useful tools, regardless of their level, from people with no previous experience to professional musicians and choirs.
The admission price for the workshop includes entry to the Museum and the exhibitions.
It is necessary to bring a mat, comfortable clothing, a blanket, and water for the workshop.
[Photography: Rodrigo Vazquez]

Following the Sun: Candela Capitán
2024-05-18 12:00 - 14:00 (Europe/Madrid) | Museu Tàpies
The roof of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies is to become an experimental playground for Opimelissa, a collective who cook, sing, dance and lots more. We’ll be following the sun with the gentle irony and humour of Júlia Barbany, the architecture of the catchy electrosong of Petit Ibèric, the philosophical canticles of Max Grosse about the life and lovesickness of an odd sock with a hole in it, the egodilirium of the sharp-penned dramatist and writer Berta Prieto (if you don’t know who she is yet, you’re living in a cave!), the rhythm of DJ, performer and militant for self-governance Meritxell de Soto, the overflowing energy of tender, multi-faceted punkmother Belén Barenys, the experimental Latin music of Deprerreo, the contorted body of Candela Capitán, who denounces the sexualisation of women through convulsive metrics.
Third session of the programme Following the Sun, an experimental series of sound and stage performances, presenting nine new sessions by young creative talents. The programme, curated and produced by Carolina Olivares Esturillo, aims to promote the youthful, inexhaustible energy of artists to light up and give new life to Tàpies’ solitary sock that presides over the Fundació’s roof terrace.

Third session: Candela Capitán
Control tools in freedom, cowbells and algorithms, “slow living” and “screen hypnotism” are the basis of CELDA SONORA, the new solo by Candela Capitán (Seville, 1996) for the cycle “Following the sun”, curated by Carolina Olivares Esturillo, at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, which will be presented on May 18 to celebrate International Museum Day.

CELDA SONORA is a “dance” process that explores the body and movement to demystify the idea of ​​finding a deeper connection with oneself, others and the environment through the New Age phenomenon. This piece fuses two instruments of free control as disparate as the cowbell and the algorithm, and implements what Captain calls “Slow Living movement practice” in dance. The constrained body and a rudimentary soundtrack are the response to technological saturation, the accelerated pace and search for instant gratification that characterize much of contemporary generations.

Candela Capitán is an action artist and choreographer. Her personal work explores the activation and deactivation of social links, putting the body in relation to other bodies, objects and images collective. New communication technologies, relationships cross-border interactions between artistic disciplines or the intergenerational impact and its consequences are some of the subjects that his projects go through.These serve to create dream spaces and parallel realities in the form of choreographies, installations or performances that invite audience to participate directly in their tensions, joys and delusions. Mostly uses the language of performance to study the limits of dance, thanks to an exhaustive knowledge of the body in movement and its presence on stage. Her works are developed in different media (live actions,facilities or the audiovisual field) and vehicles (through platforms virtual or live), with the aim of finding different channels of interconnection with the public or questioning artistic disciplines and their possibilities.

Programme curated and produced by Carolina Olivares Esturillo
Design: Ana Habash and Ignasi Ayats. Illustrated by: Eduard Sales
Ticket sales through the Fundació website and at the box office. Limited capacity

Link to the full programme.

Barcelona Poetry Festival. With Miquel Desclot and Horacio Curti
2024-05-18 21:00 - 22:00 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Within the framework of the Night of the Museums and within the programming of the Barcelona Poetry festival, the poet Miquel Desclot will recite a selection of the poems that are included in the poetic anthology On a pillow of grass which includes an extensive selection of classical Japanese lyrics, from the 4th century to the present, with haikus and tanks chosen and covered by Desclot.
The poetic recital will consist of three parts and between each part there will be a musical interlude performed by the shakuhashi flutist, Horacio Curti.

PARTICIPANTS
Miquel Desclot
He published the first book of poetry, with the Lullian title of Ira it’s sad passion, as winner of the Amadeu Oller prize for unpublished works, in the spring of 1971. During the half century that has passed since then, he has continued publishing his own verses, such as Songs of the moon in the hat (1978), Aucas and scarecrows (1987), As if always (1994), Fantasies, variations and escape (2006), and poetic versions, such as Lambeth prophetic books, de William Blake (1987-89), I have herbs everywhere. From Japanese lyric (1995), Song book by Francesco Petrarca (2016), I have punished life by living it, de Vincenzo Cardarelli (2020) or The beautiful lady without mercy. Poetic interpretations of English (2021), as well as compilations by Jacques Prévert, William Wordsworth, Umberto Saba, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Robert Frost and Wilhelm Müller. In 2020 he won the Carles Riba poetry prize with the book Wake me up when I’m not sleeping.
In the field of theater, he has translated several works by William Shakespeare for different companies, collected in the volume Choice of works (2017), and seven comedies by Molière, collected in Seven comedies and one ballet (2022), and works by Carlo Goldoni and Guillaume Apollinaire.
He has also published poetry for children, collected under the title The word tamer (2012), and books about music, The golden age of music (2003 and 2022).

Horacio Curti
Doctor in Ethnomusicology, he is a professor at the Escuela Superior de Música de Cataluña (ESMUC) and a collaborating researcher of INET at the Universidad de Aveiro from where he researches sound aesthetics of Japanese music and artistic research.
He learned about the shakuhachi flute in the Himalayan region and traveled to Japan to study it under the guidance of Kaoru Kakizakai within the Kokusai Shakuhachi Kenshukan. He has played and taught in Asia, several countries in Europe and North and South America, developing an artistic activity that includes work within traditional Japanese classical music, as well as free improvisation and contemporary Western classical music.
He has performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the National Orchestra of Spain and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Liège (Belgium), and regularly collaborates with dance, poetry and theater. Beyond ephemeral creations, he has published two solo albums (It is and Home is now), the book-CD Zen Stories: Little stories to wake up (together with Marta Millà) and edited the book Eolssigu! The Sounds of Korea.

Conferences on art and spirituality in the artwork of Picasso, Tàpies and Miró
2024-05-22 17:00 - 21:00 (Europe/Madrid) | Museu Tàpies
Online Tickets

From 21 to 24 May 2024
Pompeu Fabra University, Antoni Tàpies Foundation, Joan Miró Foundation and Picasso Museum

In 2023, what has been called the triple commemoration “Picasso 2023 / Tàpies 2024 / Miró 2025” begins in Barcelona and Catalonia. In 2023, we celebrate the 50th. anniversary of Picasso’s death and the 60th. of the opening of the Museum that bears his name. The year 2024 is the centenary of the birth of Tàpies, and 2025, the 50th. anniversary of the inauguration of the Joan Miró Foundation.
As an important event within the programming of the Tàpies Year and the triple commemoration, with the support of the Department of Culture of the Generalitat of Catalonia and with the collaboration of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, the Museu Picasso and the Fundació Joan Miró, the Conferences on art and spirituality in the artwork of Picasso, Tàpies and Miró encourage intellectual and artistic debate between outstanding scholars, artists and thinkers, with the epicenter in the Antoni Tàpies Meditation Room of the UPF.
The second day of conferences, on Wednesday 22 May, will concentrate the events at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, with the participation of the art scholar Martine Heredia, the poet and essayist Alfonso Alegre and the artist Susy Gómez. There will also be a conversation between the artist Antoni Llena and the conference director, Manuel Guerrero, and the special issue of the magazine Engramma dedicated to Antoni Tàpies will be presented, with Imma Prieto, director of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Monica Centanni, director of Engramma, and Victoria Cirlot and Ada Naval, editors of this issue of the magazine.

Directors of the conference: Victoria Cirlot, professor in the Department of Humanities at Pompeu Fabra University, and Manuel Guerrero, critic and essayist.

Programme

Antoni Tàpies. Mocador i vernís, 1993. © Private Collection, Barcelona / Vegap © Photography: Davide Camesasca, 2024.

Today is Tàpies. Ricard Bru - Nana Shimomura
2024-05-28 18:00 - 19:00 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Tickets

Organised by the Fundació Antoni Tàpies as part of the Tàpies Centenary Year, Today is Tàpies is a series of transgenerational and interdisciplinary conversations conducted and moderated by the cultural journalist Rita Roig (Terrassa, 1997). The aim is to interpret Tàpies’ texts as a starting point for reflecting on current issues such as ecology, the right to self-determination, interculturality and political commitment in art.
The words and ideas of the artist will be revisited during a series of thirteen sessions, with invited participants from different generations and diverse professional fields (culture, education, science, politics, environment, health and human sciences) helping to construct a polyphonic story that will be collected in the form of a podcast. Thanks to the collaboration of Catalunya Ràdio, the podcast will allow us to experience the generated knowledge in another format and in another context.

CHAPTER 6. RETURN TRIP: EAST AND WEST
Tàpies always saw in Eastern art a modernity akin to the essence of the avant-garde: a desire for change and rupture and an appreciation of process and imperfection were some of the aspects of Eastern culture that the artist was interested in following. The spirit of Eastern peoples coincided with Tàpies idea of art as something to stoke the viewer’s imagination, free the mind and fight alienation. Ricard Bru and Nana Shimomura will take Tàpies’ ideas as their starting point for reflecting on the validity of the East in the Western world today: from the fetishising gaze to the fans of Korean Pop, as well as the fascination with Japonisme in Catalan history.

PARTICIPANTS
Ricard Bru is a specialist in Japanese history and culture. He holds a PhD in Art History from the Universitat de Barcelona, and specialises in the links between Japanese art and Japonisme in Catalonia, Spain and Europe. He expanded his field of work with long research periods in Japan, especially at the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies, Kyoto. He has curated various exhibitions at the Museo del Prado, Museu Picasso, Monastery of Pedralbes and Caixaforum. He also curated the permanent exhibition of the Museum of World Cultures, Barcelona.
Nana Shimomura is a multidisciplinary artist who deconstructs calligraphy by intertwining her work with contemporary media and associating it with art, music, dance, poetry and architecture. Her calligraphic expression challenges traditional perceptions of art through the primordial, creative impulse of mark-making, or kaku, which in Japanese means ‘writing’, ‘drawing’ and ‘scratching’. Her artistic practice is based on the concept of constellations, which she sees as celestial bodies that bring us close to our ancient ancestors, who also valued them. She is currently resident at Hangar.

Today is Tàpies programme
Podcasts Today is Tàpies, by Catalunya Ràdio.

Intensive workshop for students with Ghanaian artist Serge Clottey
2024-05-31 | Eina
einaidea invites students to join an intensive 3-week workshop with Ghanaian artist Serge Clottey in collaboration with the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona. The aim of the project is the collaborative construction of a large mural piece, a modular object made of recycled plastic whose installation will also be accompanied by a performative action in the public space. Selected students will be part of a team working at Eina Bosc in collaboration with Clottey’s team and members of the Afro-descendant cooperative Periferia Cimarronas.
The project emerges from Serge Clottey’s practice around what the artist has named “Afrogallonism”. The abundance of yellow plastic gallons in the African continent visibilizes its geopolitical history as well as its neocolonial present. The reuse of scraps of this material—cut, perforated, and woven by hand—as well as its iteration and repurposing serves in Clottey’s work as a model of redistribution, as well as a vehicle for reflection on the migratory and economic reality on the African continent.
Following the construction and installation of the work Beyond the Skin on the front of Fundació Antoni Tàpies, a performative action will take place on Tuesday 2 July, conceived by Clottey together with all participants.
The workshop/ambush, co-organized by einaidea and Fundació Antoni Tàpies, will take place from Monday to Friday between 13-28 June, from 3-9 pm at Eina Bosc. Each student will receive a remuneration of 250€ for their participation in the workshop.
If interested, please send a short motivation note to caterina.miralles@ftapies.com before 31 May!

The foldable museum. Activities for families 2024
2024-06-02 11:00 - 12:30 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Tickets

The Fundació Antoni Tàpies invites you to the presentation and activation of a fold-out model that will allow us to explore the architecture of the museum. Through a series of games and reflections, we will discover the peculiarities of a building that was created for a publishing house and years later became a contemporary art museum.
Fold-out model and activity by El globus vermell. Each family will receive a free model.

El globus vermell is a cultural association founded in 2009 with the aim of forming critical and discerning citizens, involved in their urban context and taking an active role in the transformation of their cities into healthier, more sustainable environments.
As a collective they operate on three levels: cultural (guided visits, itineraries, workshops, publications, exhibitions, etc.); social (public participation, events, etc.); and planning (design, new construction and rehabilitation under the parameters of bio-architecture). They are part of the Educational Project of the City of Barcelona and the Pedagogical Innovation Council (CIP), under the Municipal Institute of Education. Its members are signatories of the Civic Commitment to Sustainability. In 2012, they were awarded the COAC Medal in recognition of their work, and in 2017, the CIP’s Quality Seal. The founders of the collective are architects who, besides collaborating with El globus vermell, combine their work as planners with research, university lecturing, cultural administration and information on architecture and the city.

Trauma-Sensitive Yoga
2024-06-11 18:00 - 19:00 (Europe/Madrid) | Museu Tàpies
Tickets

Our bodies store and gather our lived experiences. Everything that we have learnt since we were young—how to interpret the world, how relationships work, our self-esteem, how to react in challenging moments—is saved as if on a hard disk, regulating our way of understanding the world and functioning in it. It is through the body, furthermore, that we are able to incorporate new ways of perceiving and acting in the world. Through the body we can recognise how we are, identify our needs, respond to them and adopt new strategies for interacting with ourselves and with others. Our jobs, families, social contexts and the activities we carry out are where we put into practice what we have learnt. How we treat others, how we deal with demanding situations, how we are or are not able to connect with others in both pleasant and hard circumstances—all these questions are all dictated by this integrated learning process.
Trauma-sensitive yoga offers a space for recognising and educating our internal systems as they perceive and function in the world. In this workshop led by María Macaya, organised on the occasion of the exhibition Chiharu Shiota: Everyone, a Universe, a practical session is offered including a chair and mat (you can bring your own, or use one of those provided). This is followed by a debate on various aspects of the methodology and how they can be applied, not only in a yoga session, but also in an array of life contexts, creating safety and connection in relation to work, family, social life and personal space as well.

María Macaya has a BA in Art History and International Relations from Tufts University, a Creative Writing certificate from Stanford University, and an MA in Art Criticism from Columbia University. She founded Rādika in 2016, with the aim of giving voice to mental and emotional health issues, providing knowledge and tools to support wellness. Through the Rādika platform, she offers courses and training sessions, as well as doing professional interviews aimed at reducing emotional and mental distress.
Macaya is specialised in trauma and trauma-sensitive yoga. She is certified by Gabor Maté’s professional programme in Compassionate Inquiry, and has 300 certification hours from the Center for Trauma and Embodiment in Brookline, Massachusetts, as well as training in the TCTSY method and in the advanced programme at the Center for Yoga and Trauma Recovery in San Francisco. She is also certified in addictions and recovery by Stanford University and has studied neuroscience at King’s College London. She is an advanced professor of Jivamukti Yoga, with an 800-hour certification, training other teachers in the school.
Macaya is currently training in contemplative care of dying.

We recommend attending with comfortable clothing for the exercise (it is not necessary to wear sport clothing, as long as you can move easily and comfortably). No previous experience doing yoga is required to sign up for the session. The session will be held in Spanish language (castellano).

The Chairs of Tàpies: Bartolomé Ferrando
2024-06-14 19:00 - 19:30 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Tickets

The Chairs of Tàpies is a series of multidisciplinary sound actions organised in the context of the Tàpies Centenary Year, with the collaboration of Pompeu Fabra University. The proposal focuses on the voice and words to create a sound accompaniment to oral memory. In this way, each of the thirteen sessions will feature a creator whose starting point will be the chair, taken as a performative object, linking back to the creative universe of Tàpies through the expressive languages and settings of the present day.
The action for this seventh chair of Tàpies is Brief Phonetic Actions, a proposal by Bartolomé Ferrando. The project brings together short pieces based on the decomposition and re-composition of the voice and words, with some dedicated to Antoni Tàpies. A few of the pieces are grounded in phonetic poetry, situated part-way between speech and music, derived from dadaism and related to Concrete Poetry and Lettrism. In most of these actions, Ferrando addresses the improvised emission of language, in the search for the traits of oral primitivism.

Bartolomé Ferrando is Professor of Intermedia Art and Performance at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. As a performer, he has participated in international festivals and encounters held in Europe, the Americas and Asia. He has coordinated various international festivals at IVAM (Valencia) and MNCARS (Madrid). Ferrando has exhibited his visual poetry in various cities in Spain, Italy and France, and is a member of the groups SIC and dosentredos. Furthermore, he has published the journal Texto poético and the books Hacia una poesía del hacer, La mirada móvil, El arte intermedia, El arte de la performance, elementos de creación, and De la poesía visual al arte de acción, amongst others. He has also produced various recordings on cassette tape, vinyl and CD, as well as videos and DVDs of performance work.

[Photography: Bartolomé Ferrando. Decadence Festival. València. 2015-1. Foto Imke Zeinstra. Homenatge. Poema sonor.]

Following the Sun: Belén Barenys
2024-06-15 19:00 - 21:00 (Europe/Madrid) | Museu Tàpies
Tickets

The roof of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies is to become an experimental playground for Opimelissa, a collective who cook, sing, dance and lots more. We’ll be following the sun with the gentle irony and humour of Júlia Barbany, the architecture of the catchy electrosong of Petit Ibèric, the philosophical canticles of Max Grosse about the life and lovesickness of an odd sock with a hole in it, the egodilirium of the sharp-penned dramatist and writer Berta Prieto (if you don’t know who she is yet, you’re living in a cave!), the rhythm of DJ, performer and militant for self-governance Meritxell de Soto, the overflowing energy of tender, multi-faceted punkmother Belén Barenys, the experimental Latin music of Deprerreo, the contorted body of Candela Capitán, who denounces the sexualisation of women through convulsive metrics.
Fourth session of the programme Following the Sun, an experimental series of sound and stage performances, presenting nine new sessions by young creative talents. The programme, curated and produced by Carolina Olivares Esturillo, aims to promote the youthful, inexhaustible energy of artists to light up and give new life to Tàpies’ solitary sock that presides over the Fundació’s roof terrace.

Fourth session: Belén Barenys
Once upon a time there was a nerdy teenager who wrote, drew, danced and composed songs. Now she is older and teaches the things she does, but at that time there was only art for art’s sake, poetry for poetry’s sake, without any pretensions. Artistic creation was an intimate act with herself, a continuity of the game of childhood. This performance is the opportunity for that teenage Belén to present her songs, texts and reflections from that time. They’re immature things, cringe-worthy things, but they’re perhaps the most honest and genuine things she’s ever created. It is a tribute to the artistic gesture that is made after the mathematics homework of 2nd year of ESO. Everything that has been buried in notebooks for years will come to light in a performance that closes a circle and celebrates the first times that a teenager dared to be something similar to an artist. Feismo mágico is an autobiographic experimental sound by Belén Barenys curated by Carolina Olivares Esturillo.

Belén Barenys (Barcelona, 1999) expresses himself through writing, interpretation, dance, cinema, art and songs. While she has a career as an actress and backup singer for the singer Rigoberta Bandini, MEMÉ is her musical project in loner which aims to be radically self-conscious, original and unpredictable. With irony as her flag, this artist wants to delve into topics such as the internet, sex or the transition from childhood to adulthood from a personal and honest perspective

Programme curated and produced by Carolina Olivares Esturillo
Design: Ana Habash and Ignasi Ayats. Illustrated by: Eduard Sales
Ticket sales through the Fundació website and at the box office. Limited capacity

Link to the full programme.

Today is Tàpies: Eugènia Balcells - Pilar Bonet
2024-06-25 18:00 - 19:00 UTC | Museu Tàpies
Tickets

Today is Tàpies is a series of conversations across generations and disciplines, led and moderated by arts journalist Rita Roig (Terrassa, 1997) and organised by the Fundació Antoni Tàpies as part of the Tàpies Centenary Year. It sets out to interpret the artist’s texts as a starting point to discuss current issues such as environmentalism, self-determination for peoples, interculturality and the political commitment of art.
The series will encourage people to think about the artist’s words and thoughts though thirteen events at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies involving people from a range of professional backgrounds (arts, education, science, politics, the environment, health and life sciences) and different generations. Altogether it will construct a polyphonic dialogue that will be recorded in podcast form thanks to cooperation with Catalunya Ràdio, in order to recover and experience the knowledge generated in a different format and a different context.

Chapter 7: Towards an emancipating spirituality
In his writing, Antoni Tàpies often talked about spirituality. In the face of the idea that modernity might end up freeing us from faith and religious beliefs, Tàpies argued that spiritual progress had to go hand in hand with the scientific, technological and political advances of the day. Tàpies believed that artists had an important role to play in this progress. Taking up an idea of Paul Klee whereby the artist is “an intermediary, a transmitter or nature”, Tàpies argued that the job of artists was to pass on a spirituality suited to modern times. In this conversation, Eugènia Balcells and Pilar Bonet will deal with the pairing of art and spirituality, a relationship that has existed since the beginning of time, leaving examples that show how creativity has been a way of passing on knowledge of the beyond, of the intangible.

PARTICIPANTS
Eugènia Balcells is a pioneering Catalan audiovisual artist. She began her career in the 1970s between New York and Barcelona in the context of conceptual art, and light has become the central theme of her work. Her videos, films, light installations, performances and murals have been exhibited at festivals and museums worldwide.

Pilar Bonet is a university lecturer, art critic and curator. She explores feminism and emancipatory spiritualities, in particular with regard to the contributions of visionary European writers born before 1950, leading her to create a new critical space focusing on graphic, textile and literary creativity by early women in the history of art from a feminist point of view, among them Josefa Tolrà (1880–1959) and the Aragonese Julia Aguilar (1899–1979). She is president of the Associació Josefa Tolrà and director of the Visionary Women Art research group.

Today is Tàpies programme

Podcasts Today is Tàpies, by Catalunya Ràdio.

Serge Attukwei Clottey. Beyond the Skin. Openning Programme
2024-07-02 18:30 - 21:00 (Europe/Madrid)
Inauguration of the project Beyond the Skin, by Serge Attukwei Clottey, curated by Imma Prieto, director of the Museum, within the framework of Tàpies Centenary Year.
On Tuesday, 2 July 2024, at 7 p.m., Step of Silence, Dance, Memories Resonate, a performative itinerary that will cross the centre of Barcelona from the Museum, where the artistic installation will be presented, made in collaboration with einaidea, Fundació Eina’s research and cultural programming platform and members of the Afro-descendant cooperative Periferia Cimarronas, to the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (TNC). Clottey will make a stop at the former headquarters of the Compañía General de Tabacos de Filipinas at La Rambla.
The ninety-minute itinerary is conceived as a collaborative community action with music and dance, and is an invitation to reflect on the environment, migration and the economy. Open to everyone, the proceedings will end in the TNC gardens with a concert by the Senegalese musician Momi Maiga, as part of Grec Festival programme, and a gastronomic tasting of African products, thanks to the collaboration of local Barcelona cooperatives of women of Afro-descent. The capacity in the TNC gardens is limited.
On Wednesday, 3 July 2024, at 7 p.m., Els homes de carbó, performance by the artist at Sala Periferia Cimarronas, within the framework of Grec Festival de Barcelona.

The Coal Men
2024-07-03 | Cooperativa Periferia Cimarronas, C/ de Cerdanyola, 26, Barcelona
The consequences of a migratory process or displacement for people’s life is the central theme of the performance staged by Serge Attukwei Clottey as part of the Grec festival programme. The Ghanaian artist asks himself how we can reconstruct family experiences when we do not live in our home because we have had to leave, how each individual deals with prejudice, cultural anxiety and the feeling of belonging when they live in a foreign country. What physical and mental barriers a person must overcome in order to get used to living amidst unfamiliar elements and what power relations arise from this situation are some of the question Clottey asks himself as he places his own body in a state of anxiety, the usual state of a subject affected by an identity crisis who seeks elements to allow him to regain the feeling of home, and is forced to struggle against anti-migrant prejudice.

The Chairs of Tàpies: Blanca Llum Vidal and Los Sara Fontán
2024-07-19 19:00 - 19:30 UTC | Museu Tàpies
The Chairs of Tàpies is a series of multidisciplinary sound actions organised in the context of the Tàpies Centenary Year, with the collaboration of Pompeu Fabra University. The proposal focuses on the voice and words to create a sound accompaniment to oral memory. In this way, each of the thirteen sessions will feature a creator whose starting point will be the chair, taken as a performative object, linking back to the creative universe of Tàpies through the expressive languages and settings of the present day.
The eighth proposal of the series was conceived by Blanca Llum Vidal and Los Sara Fontán, in an action that modulates textures, processes the voice and lends musicality to things which perhaps were not meant to be music. Bringing together a host of authors, the invited artists will attempt to transform words into rhythmic matter, extracting sounds out of things while building a narrative. As occurs in Tàpies, the chair will not just be an idea, but above all an object and a reality to be considered, agitated and meditated upon.

Blanca Llum Vidal studied Social Work and Catalan Philology, and has a Master in Contemporary Thought. She works in the Zona Franca of Barcelona in a shelter for people who are functional diverse. With Arnau Pons she has translated La Douleur, by Marguerite Duras, and individually has translated Duras’s book Écrire. She has edited the poetry of Àngel Guimerà, Mercè Rodoreda’s letters from exile to Anna Murià, short stories by Víctor Català, Dues Catalunyes: jocfloralescos i xarons, by Àngel Carmona and, amongst other projects, the book accompanying the exhibition on Francesc Tosquelles and the catalogue for Agnès Varda, to be released this year at the CCCB. She was editor of an anthology of feminist essays by Maria Aurèlia Capmany, and has recited her work in the Catalan Countries, Spain, Ukraine, Santiago de Chile and Buenos Aires (at the International Book Fair). She has written about Ausiàs March, Blanchot, Kafka, Rodoreda, Arendt, Hersch, Català and Duras, amongst others. In 2023 she released an anthology of her work, published by Textos Sentido Edição & Letras, translated to Portuguese by Àlex Tarradellas, and is currently preparing an anthology of her work to be translated into Italian by Marcelo Belotti, and into Spanish by Unai Velasco. Her publications include La cabra que hi havia, Nosaltres i tu, Homes i ocells, Visca!, Punyetera flor, Maripasoula (crònica d’un viatge a la Guaiana francesa), Aquest amor que no és u / Este amor que no es uno (Spanish translation by Berta García Faet), Amor a la brega, La princesa sou Vós / La princesa sois Vos (Spanish translation by Unai Velasco), Llegir petit i escriure sobre literatura i amor and No cometràs adulteri. She has published in the Quadern supplement of El País and in the political and cultural daily El Temps, and is currently a regular contributor to the digital review Catorze. She has been on stage with Maria Callís to perform La Infanticida, by Víctor Català, performing as well with the classic and post-rock music of Los Sara Fontán, and most recently with the sound designs of Julián D’Avino, in a show taking its aim at contradictions in politics, love, ethics and aesthetics, both old and new. This year she was an invitee to the Guadalajara Book Fair (Mexico).
Los Sara Fontán is an experimental duo featuring Sara Fontán and Edi Pou. They focus on live performance of a physical, passionate and punk character, ever-changing and open to the surroundings. A concert by Los Sara Fontán is a play on melody and rhythm, adding features of programmatic romanticism to directly and indirectly narrate a story, giving audience members freedom to interpret the work in a personal manner.
Stimulated by the question of whether it is possible to advance a career in music without following the productive routines of the music industry, Los Sara Fontán spent five years touring, playing at festivals and self-run venues across Europe, without recording their music. This was possible thanks to a musical and personal underground network they feel fortunate to belong to. In the autumn of 2023, they released Queda pendiente, an album done at their own residence, which they performed, recorded and produced themselves.
Their music is open code, as the prolific duo continually recomposes its own creations to open them up to broader, multidisciplinary collectives, whether other musicians (SO with Amorante, 4132314 with Tarta Relena and Cocanha), different communities (Laboratório dos Riscos Impossíveis, with residents of the Fontainhas neighbourhood in Porto), dancers (Fem una bona pena abans de morir, with Sònia Gómez), poetry (La princesa sou Vós, with Blanca Llum Vidal), theatre (Concrete Matter, by Los Detectives, and Songs for the bitch-witch women, by Mariona Naudin), or TV series and films (the soundtracks for Autodefensa, Magaluf Ghost Town and Remember My Name).

This session of The Chairs of Tàpies will be part of the opening programme of the exhibition Antoni Tàpies. The Practice of Art.
