Loop Festival: 10 Recommended Exhibitions and Activities

BarcelonaThe Loop festival is back. Titled MirrorsThe 23rd edition of the festival presents the work of 155 national and international artists in 74 galleries until November 22nd. "Film and video art have the capacity to create visions and images that transform us, and the danger of illusions must be considered," warns the festival's artistic director, Filipa Ramos, regarding the title. Ramos also explains that her aim is for the public to question what a mirage is in a "difficult" social, economic, and political moment like the present. Meanwhile, the Loop art fair will be held at the Almanac Barcelona hotel from November 18th to 20th.

These are 10 recommended exhibitions and activities from the Loop 2025 festival.

'Wind' and 'Songdelay'

By Juan Jonas. In the neoclassical hall of the Museu Picasso. From November 11 to 23.

New Yorker Joan Jonas, one of today's leading artists, and Pablo Picasso share a transgressive spirit. More specifically, that quote attributed to the artist from Málaga: "Art is a lie that made us see the truth." Jonas's exhibition in the neoclassical hall of the Museu Picasso includes two films dating from between 1968 and 1973; that is, from Picasso's final years. As the artist from Málaga had done, inWind(1968) andSongdelay(1973), Jonas challenged the viewers' perception, in his case playing with desynchronization.

'faith without works is dead'

By Albert Serra. In the Tàpies Museum. November 20

A new opportunity to see the film about Tàpies that Albert Serra made to mark the centenary of the artistand to stay and listen to what Serra has to say about the film to cultural critic Joan Burdeos. The film, described as magnetic and violent, lasts 53 minutes, divided into eight parts with titles such asFriend, OracleandFirst fall. There are scenes with almost no action, sometimes set against the backdrop of a Tàpies painting. One of the distinctive elements of Faith without works is dead It's the soundtrack, made with layers of synthesizer, by Serra's regular musician, Marc Verdaguer.

'Torita-encuetada'

From Elyla. At the Enric Miralles Foundation. From November 11 to 22

Elyla is a multidisciplinary artist queer Based in Masaya, Nicaragua, Elyla reimagines traditional folk practices in this video to question their meanings and the power systems they uphold. She situates the body... queer as "a space of resistance and regeneration." Regarding Torita-encuetadaIt is "an anti-colonial ceremony that evokes liberation from oppression through a fire-lit ritual, inspired by the Nicaraguan cultural tradition ofbull in a cuckooa bull-shaped structure filled with fireworks." What the artist does is subvert the typically masculine symbol to introduce "a reinterpretation queer and playful." The video is a collaboration with Nicaraguan filmmaker Milton Guillén, produced by TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection.

'To the wind'

From Mar Reykjavik at Casa Elizalde. November 19, 20 and 21

It is an "essay on translation and censorship," as Mar Reikiavik (Sagunto, 1995) herself states. The film is structured around a conversation between two people, and captures the shared consensus of the two interpreters when attempting to translate the song. To the wind by Raimon. Thus, translation becomes "a space of resistance that allows us to tell our stories, while also helping us generate possible presents." The opening, which will include a performance component, will be on the afternoon of the 21st.

'Ipsa sonando arbusta'

By Ana Vaz and Guilherme Vaz, curated by einaidea. At the Museum of Music. From November 11 to February 15

The title means The same bushes rustle. The exhibition, curated by Rosa León and Manuel Cirauqui, includes two films by Brazilian artist Ana Vaz (1986) alongside a selection of recordings by her father, Guilherme Vaz, brought together in a listening space. The curators' aim is to create an "open exercise that brings into dialogue the works of two creative figures and the sensitive and resonant worlds they inhabit." Born in central-western Brazil, Vaz, who has a solid international career, uses film as a tool to "expand connections with non-human or spectral forms of life."

'Night fishing with ancestors'

From the Karrabing Film Collective, at the Catalonia Excursionist Center. From November 11 to 22

The Karrabing Film Collective is a group of Aboriginal filmmakers from northern Australia who work on the need to archive and share the memory and identity of their people. Night fishing with ancestors It doesn't have a linear structure but rather mixes past and present, from Captain Cook's arrival in 1770 and the consequences that followed. "We found it interesting to rethink what it means to be indigenous and to question exoticism," says Ramos.

'Strawberry fields'

By Julia Montilla. At La Fabra Contemporary Art Center. Until January 25.

This is the winning project of the Video Creation Prize, an initiative of the Territorial Centers for Visual Arts of Catalonia, Santa Mònica, the Department of Culture of the Generalitat of Catalonia, and Loop Barcelona. Julia Montilla (Barcelona, ​​1970) delves into "the figure of seasonal female farmworkers and the problems arising from intensive agriculture," establishing a continuity between "our colonial past and the current extractive regime." The film's title references the Beatles song of the same name, which they wrote in Almería, and is a hallucinatory mix of visual essay, documentary, and experimental film about "the physical and human landscapes of strawberry cultivation in Huelva." "The film project seeks to open a critical space regarding current forms of patriarchal colonialism and ecocide, and therefore aligns with the principles of representational intersectionality, a tool for resistance and disruption of dominant narratives about subaltern subjects," the artist states.

'I compete with time'

By Saodat Ismailova. At Galería Ángeles Barcelona. From November 15 to January 17

Horsehair is the central theme of the exhibition by Uzbek-born artist Saodat Ismailova, where she delves into the traditions and memory of her country, and the role of women in a context that has undergone many transformations to which they have had to adapt. The artist presents various stages of horsehair: as a raw material that forms the projection surface in Time's tail (2025), in dialogue with veils woven with horsehair, and as a political object of female emancipation in the film Her right. The same gallery is presenting an exhibition at its second location on Carrer dels Àngels.

'AHH!'

By Anna Cornudella. At the Can Framis Museum of the Vila Casas Foundation. From November 11 to 22

The exhibition includes a series of works by Anna Cornudella (Barcelona, ​​1991) characterized by the strong pictorial quality of the moving image. "The plasticity of painting and of human and more-than-human bodies are protagonists of an imaginary world that embraces the strange," she says. These representations become stages where visual and verbal poetics intertwine through the music video format, in which the artist engages in dialogue with various musicians from the contemporary Catalan music scene, specifically the group b1n0. AHH! It is the result of observing a single flower of the species Hibiscus mutabilis over the course of a week, during the natural deterioration process, recorded with a USB digital microscope. Furthermore, the rate slows down in b1 (2019), filmed at the historic Cine Avenida in Sidi Ifni (Morocco), and boom boom (2021) is a break with conventional reality where mourning plays a key role. On November 22nd, there will be a meeting and guided tour with Anna Cornudella and Loop curator Eva Paià. Reservations are required and can be made by emailing info@loop-barcelona.com with the subject line "Can Framis".

'The garden of electric delights'

By Billy Roisz. At Casa Seat. November 14 (7:30 p.m.)

This Friday, Austrian filmmaker and experimental musician Billy Roisz presentsKaleidosonic"An immersive experience that merges image, sound, and body into a single, expanded sensory space," as the artist herself describes it. The session will include a screening of the film. The garden of electric delights, an "abstract and luminous reinterpretation of Bosch's triptych" and a performance live audiovisual titled Lunar dusto In this piece, Roisz constructs "real-time visual and soundscapes using record players, electric bass, and electronic devices she has created herself." The event will also include a conversation between the artist and independent curator and researcher Júlia Polo.