The exhibition stems from an invitation to ten artists to step into the reserves of the museum – usually closed to the public – to visit and explore its deposits and generate new works, from photographic and video pieces, to altars and songs. The process was carried out consciously and painstakingly taking into account context and origin, in many cases highlighting specific geopolitical relations involving unequal exchange, historical amnesia or colonial violence.
This museum holds more than 70.000 objects in its collections. Ethnographic artefacts taken from contexts and geographies that may never again exist. This exhibition proposes to “reenchant” them: to resignify them, breathe life into them, without forgetting their past lives and trajectories. If artistic work is dedicated precisely to giving meaning to everything that surrounds us in a somewhat poetic manner, what better way to suggest new uses and the remediation of past times than through artistic research and imagination? This exhibition is conceived through a curatorial process that is both critical and experimental, intending to imagine emerging definitions and potential significance of the pieces that make up the collection.
We reclaim the different meanings of the word enchantment, to exercise our ability to be captivated by things again, to rescue powers and knowledges, as ell as to give active agency to these objects. To work with the possibility of reflecting on inherent tensions in our societies, so that we can turn them into places where we can imagine other possible futures.
Artists: Chiara Camoni, Domènec, Patricia Domínguez, Agnes Essonti, Nikki Luna, Regina de Miguel, Lydia Ourahmane, Ruta de autor i Chenta Tsai Tseng.
