10 Years After: Post-Emergencies in the MUSAC Collection
20 Dec 2014 - 05 Apr 2015
10 YEARS AFTER: POST-EMERGENCIES IN THE MUSAC COLLECTION
20 December 2014 - 5 April 2015
Curatorship: Koré Escobar
Coordination: Raquel Álvarez
Exhibition Layout: Kristine Guzmán
On the 1st of April 2005, the MUSAC, the Museum for Contemporary Art of Castile and Leon, opened its doors for the first time with a show called Emergencias [Emergencies], which aimed at providing a ‘map’ of the socio-political concerns of the artists making up the MUSAC’s collection at the time and the way these concerns were expressed by them.
In a few months, it will be ten years since the MUSAC opened, and we observe how much the world has changed and how problems have only exacerbated and increased. 2005’s emergencies not only remain in place – as highlighted in text by IECAH (Institute for Studies and Conflicts and Humanitarian Action) – but they have multiplied and worsened. Armed conflicts persist, and we see new conflicts adding to the list of the long-running ones or these moving to new territories; poverty and social exclusion have reached areas which were supposedly risk-free; the actions of human beings keep on putting pressure on the environment to the point of exhaustion; forced migrations cause the displacement of a large number of people who, together with their belongings, carry along a feeling of uprooting and precariousness. As always, old and new pandemics hit fragile states hardest and even ‘jump the fence’ into well-off countries; we still depend on non-renewable energy sources for subsistence... and a great many other urgent situations we sometimes believe have been solved only because mass media either don’t pay attention to them anymore or are not interested in making them known.
In the course of this decade, the MUSAC has added new pieces and authors to its collection. None of these artists are indifferent to the current socio-political and economic developments, and, therefore, with a view to supporting the commitment of the contemporary artist to their time, we see the museum’s collection has been acquiring works that question and reflect on the same aspects of reality we were dealing with in 2005, while, next to these, we find some new issues that have arisen in the world of the first decades of the 21st century.
In 10 Years After, we show part of our collection, of which some of the works are already known, grouping them in three subject areas: social crisis, environment and violence.
The first room, devoted to social crisis, addresses the distance existing between the power-holding circles and the citizens, and the consequences that decisions adopted by the former have on the latter. This space aims at showing the impact the economic crisis has had on our privileged societies and how, at the same time, it has served as a spur to awaken us from the lethargy that seemed to have overcome us.
Next, we enter the room called environment, a term that refers to the relations human beings establish with their environment, meaning not only the physical surroundings but also the social milieu. Here we would like to stress, once again, the enormous pressure we put on our planet and how we are depleting natural resources. We also want to show the fragility of the human being and his helplessness before the force of Nature in any of its devastating manifestations, or the individual’s isolation and loneliness when he becomes ‘the other’.
The show ends with a room in which the subject of violence is addressed, violence in the form of armed conflicts, irrespective of whether they are wars, terror acts or organised crime. In this room we also seek to attend to the double standard we sometimes apply depending on who exerts violence and why.
The pieces selected for this exhibition do not merely bear witness or are used as documents. They speak very openly about the issues and problems exposed in the show, but also expand towards wider and more complex horizons.
In parallel to the show, an engaged design project will take place. The project has been conceived by the artist collective Un Mundo Feliz [Brave New World] and is called Crit.Icon Poster Tour 2015 + La Ventana Criticona [The Hypercritical Window]. Its goal is to spread images of critical thinking across public space. It is a participative proposal made up of images that have been created to be shared using two different formats: a poster show and a template collection. While the exhibition is shown in the museum’s rooms, the templates presented in the museum will be available for free download on the MUSAC’s web site so that the project can break the space barrier. More info: http://musac.es/crit-icon
20 December 2014 - 5 April 2015
Curatorship: Koré Escobar
Coordination: Raquel Álvarez
Exhibition Layout: Kristine Guzmán
On the 1st of April 2005, the MUSAC, the Museum for Contemporary Art of Castile and Leon, opened its doors for the first time with a show called Emergencias [Emergencies], which aimed at providing a ‘map’ of the socio-political concerns of the artists making up the MUSAC’s collection at the time and the way these concerns were expressed by them.
In a few months, it will be ten years since the MUSAC opened, and we observe how much the world has changed and how problems have only exacerbated and increased. 2005’s emergencies not only remain in place – as highlighted in text by IECAH (Institute for Studies and Conflicts and Humanitarian Action) – but they have multiplied and worsened. Armed conflicts persist, and we see new conflicts adding to the list of the long-running ones or these moving to new territories; poverty and social exclusion have reached areas which were supposedly risk-free; the actions of human beings keep on putting pressure on the environment to the point of exhaustion; forced migrations cause the displacement of a large number of people who, together with their belongings, carry along a feeling of uprooting and precariousness. As always, old and new pandemics hit fragile states hardest and even ‘jump the fence’ into well-off countries; we still depend on non-renewable energy sources for subsistence... and a great many other urgent situations we sometimes believe have been solved only because mass media either don’t pay attention to them anymore or are not interested in making them known.
In the course of this decade, the MUSAC has added new pieces and authors to its collection. None of these artists are indifferent to the current socio-political and economic developments, and, therefore, with a view to supporting the commitment of the contemporary artist to their time, we see the museum’s collection has been acquiring works that question and reflect on the same aspects of reality we were dealing with in 2005, while, next to these, we find some new issues that have arisen in the world of the first decades of the 21st century.
In 10 Years After, we show part of our collection, of which some of the works are already known, grouping them in three subject areas: social crisis, environment and violence.
The first room, devoted to social crisis, addresses the distance existing between the power-holding circles and the citizens, and the consequences that decisions adopted by the former have on the latter. This space aims at showing the impact the economic crisis has had on our privileged societies and how, at the same time, it has served as a spur to awaken us from the lethargy that seemed to have overcome us.
Next, we enter the room called environment, a term that refers to the relations human beings establish with their environment, meaning not only the physical surroundings but also the social milieu. Here we would like to stress, once again, the enormous pressure we put on our planet and how we are depleting natural resources. We also want to show the fragility of the human being and his helplessness before the force of Nature in any of its devastating manifestations, or the individual’s isolation and loneliness when he becomes ‘the other’.
The show ends with a room in which the subject of violence is addressed, violence in the form of armed conflicts, irrespective of whether they are wars, terror acts or organised crime. In this room we also seek to attend to the double standard we sometimes apply depending on who exerts violence and why.
The pieces selected for this exhibition do not merely bear witness or are used as documents. They speak very openly about the issues and problems exposed in the show, but also expand towards wider and more complex horizons.
In parallel to the show, an engaged design project will take place. The project has been conceived by the artist collective Un Mundo Feliz [Brave New World] and is called Crit.Icon Poster Tour 2015 + La Ventana Criticona [The Hypercritical Window]. Its goal is to spread images of critical thinking across public space. It is a participative proposal made up of images that have been created to be shared using two different formats: a poster show and a template collection. While the exhibition is shown in the museum’s rooms, the templates presented in the museum will be available for free download on the MUSAC’s web site so that the project can break the space barrier. More info: http://musac.es/crit-icon