MUSEU D'ART CONTEMPORANI DE BARCELONA - FINA MIRALLES: I AM ALL THE SELVES THAT I HAVE BEEN

Her work arose in the context of the Franco dictatorship, a hostile, limiting and castrating environment in which censorship controlled all forms of expression for so-called moral reasons, determined by the power of the Catholic Church and sponsored by the regime.

Miralles broke with the academicism taught in art schools at that time and with established behavioural norms. Her practice reconfigures the concept of the artistic, within the multiplicity of attitudes that blur what traditional historiography had encompassed under the heading of Conceptual art. Art history has ascribed Miralles’ production to the Conceptual, Land art or even feminism, without attending to the breadth and complexity of her ideas, which challenge the limits of those labels. It is because of this, perhaps, that her work is so little known internationally, something this project seeks to readdress by journeying through a body of work of enormous importance.

The dislocation, the critique to the authority, the focus between what is natural or artificial, are questions that Miralles poses to confront visitors with the artist, the woman, the individual, as an object to be exposed and contemplated, as a work of art. And this is but one small example of the richness of readings raised by the extraordinary work of this artist.

The exhibition at MACBA is presented as a journey that delves into some of the crucial issues addressed by Miralles: the transversal relationship with nature in her work; the language with which we express ourselves and communicate; artistic languages and the way they overlap in the service of an idea, whether through actions, performances, photographs, paintings or videos; power relations and the ubiquitous imposition of power on our lives (especially under a dictatorship), although the more forcefully that power is exercised, the more it calls for subversion; the historical, political and social background that determines and conditions our lives and work; the status of women, at that time in an inferior social position, subject to male authority and restricted by specific laws largely aimed at maintaining moral codes of behaviour and the singular objective of nuclear family life; or the constant duality in her work between nature and artifice, reality and appearance, to give but a few examples.