Mireia Calafell. FE-RI-DES (WOUNDS)

What does it mean to think through wounds? What is it like to experience life through them? Can poets write about scars without using metaphors? Is it even worth trying?

The beginning is marked by a chair placed next to another, that is, a meeting between friends and the opportunity to pronounce wounds. Mireia Calafell uses friendship as a means of talking and reflecting on scars through the reading of her own poems, along with the words of others. She is joined by Fina Birulés, Miquel Missé, Pol Guasch and other voices who deserve to be heard when we talk about wounds. All this accompanied by another friend, composer Clara Peya, and her piano.

This activity is supported and endorsed by the Maria Canals International Piano Competition in Barcelona. As part of the second edition of the action cycle The chairs of Tàpies, by Judith Barnés, head of public programs at the Museu Tàpies.

Mireia Calafell is a poet. She is the author of Poètiques del cos (2006), Costures (2010), Tantes mudes (2014), Nosaltres, qui (2020) and Si una emergència (2024). She has received several awards, including the Lletra d’Or for Best Book in 2014, the Josep Maria Llopart Award for Best Poetry Collection Published in 2020 and the Carles Riba Award in 2023. Calafell is co-director of the La Sullivan cultural production company and was formerly co-director of the POESIA i + (2015–2016) and Barcelona Poesia (2018–2021) festivals.

Clara Peya is a pianist, composer and one of the most unique creators of the Catalan music scene. With a career that fuses jazz, pop, and electronica, she has released thirteen albums and has written numerous soundtracks for stage shows and cinema. Awarded the Premi Nacional de Cultura (2019), her work addresses issues such as feminism, dissidence, and vulnerability with great poetic and scenic power.

A collaboration with the Maria Canals International Piano Competition

Antoni Tàpies had an ongoing relationship with music throughout his career. His interest included contemporary music—which he was close to on an intellectual and creative level—and musical practice, understood as a universal language of communication. It was not fortuitous that Tàpies worked in collaboration with various initiatives where music and the arts were in dialogue, such as those organised by Club 49, a key space for the promotion of the artistic avant-garde in postwar Barcelona.

As part of the current collaboration between the Museu Tàpies and the Maria Canals Competition, for three days (November 28, 29 & 30, 2025) a piano from the event will be installed inside the exhibition Antoni Tàpies: The Imagination of the World, in dialogue with the broad presentation of invitations for cultural activities organised by Club 49. The proximity between the piano and these documents makes it possible to delve more deeply into the ambience of creative exchange Tàpies found himself in, as well as into the role played in it by contemporary music.

In parallel with the recovery of democracy, Tàpies sought to intensify his participation in cultural and social projects by creating posters, which he considered an accessible form of communication. This is the context of the poster the artist created for the 50th anniversary of the Maria Canals International Piano Competition, which arose out of his personal connection with the Barcelona music scene. Tàpies’ involvement was made possible due to the mediation of the Gaspar Farreras family and Galeria Gaspar, in particular through Elvira Farreras de Gaspar and her daughter Elvira Gaspar Farreras. The friendship between Tàpies and the musician Rossend Llates, the husband of pianist Maria Canals, is seen in the poster with the initials R. LL. on it, which likewise features those of the competition’s founder.

In the museum gallery we find Tàpies’ original artwork from which the poster was printed, making it possible to place the work in its context: dialogue between the visual arts and music, complicity between creators and cultural institutions, and the role of Tàpies as an artist closely aligned with the social and cultural fabric of the Catalonia of his time.

[Photography by Àlex Espuny]