"Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans go to see Parc Güell, but there's no communication between them."

MadridAntoni Muntadas (Barcelona, ​​​​1942) has always worked all over the world, as if he were a nomad. He has often defined himself as a outsider who arrives at a place and makes it his own by "listening, speaking and dialoguing," as Muntadas himself says on the occasion of the exhibition that the Museo Casa de la Moneda in Madrid is dedicating to him until September 28. With the title About Asia, the exhibition includes the projects that he has developed in China, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines since 2004. And how he develops the works in situ with local teams, the exhibition also means an "exercise of contextualization" of projects among which is Asian protocols: What are your concerns? The contextualization also extends to the installation, the work of architect Juan Herreros. "It all started because I was curious. It was a continent I didn't know, and one I wanted to know more about," says the artist.

"In his various series and proposals, Muntadas has made us see that in everything that is said, expressed, formulated, or represented, while enabling an exchange of information, there is also something that is lost or hidden," says the exhibition's curator, José Jiménez. Thus, the artist considers the "intentionality" of these losses and wants to share with the public the process of discovering what has been lost or hidden.

Nothing goes unnoticed for Muntadas, and he can reveal the mechanisms of economic and political power from any sphere. Asian Protocols: Excerpts It is made with materials about China, Japan and Korea that he has collected over the years. Asian Protocols: Textbooks reveals how in these three countries textbooks are used as a tool of manipulation that underpins a "lack of mutual understanding as a trigger for certain conflicts between these countries." "They've all had wars and conflicts with each other, and there's a great deal of hostility. It's incredible, because they travel around Europe, they go to see Parc Güell, but they don't travel among themselves, they don't communicate," explains the artist.

And Asian protocols: Cartographies, Muntadas interpreted 43 key words, including religion, sports, policy, order and diplomacy, with over 400 images taken from the media. "The associations are obviously subjective; I always speak of a critical subjectivity. Admitting that there is no objectivity, I embrace that subjectivity, but always in a sense of critical analysis."

Later, he critiques more formalist contemporary architecture with three videos from the series In translation: It's impossible to tell which country each video belongs to, or the type of building: "This modern architecture, made of glass and metal, is completely untethered from use. These buildings could be a museum, a hospital, an airport..." says the artist.

In China, Muntadas had to work within the rigors of censorship. But even so, he obtained the opinions of a group of men and women from different areas of Beijing by asking them what concerns them most. The answers are very varied, and range from "recognition of Chinese calligraphy" to "corruption, housing prices, the prosperity of the country and the recovery of Taiwan." Muntadas also points out the most widespread stereotypes about China with a work made with bowls full of fortune cookies, which are actually an invention of a restaurant in San Francisco. "In China, people would pick them up, but they didn't know what they were about," he explains.

The ravages of colonialism in the Philippines

The tour concludes with Muntadas' works dedicated to the Philippines, the result of a project sponsored by the Ateneo Art Gallery in Manila in 2022, which later continued at the Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art in Seville. "In the Philippines, there is violence, but it's not the violence of saying it's dangerous to walk down the street, but rather the violence of the political gestures of the invasions, and of the people who have arrived and created a conflict," says the artist, who in this case chose to work with previously unseen materials from his career, but which are inspired by objects such as silk shawls and commemorative medals. With all of them, Muntadas puts his finger on the sore spot of the ravages of colonialism, starting with "botanical colonization," represented by a series of plates painted with Spanish plants that became invasive species.

In the case of shawls, the colonization is reversed, as they became popular in the state. But Muntadas hammered home the point and, instead of flowers, embroidered images of historical episodes such as the death of Magellan, the executions of young Filipinos by the US army, and a demonstration in support of women used as sex slaves by the Japanese army. Also included is a copy of José Rizal's novel Noli me tangere, considered a symbol of the Philippine revolution, and the reproduction of a cartoon critical of Rodrigo Duterte's policy of attacking any form of dissent camouflaged as a claim to combat drug trafficking. "The Philippines were invaded by the Spanish, the Japanese, the English, and the Americans, and all the invasions were very violent."

And the last work on display represents "a horizontal monument," as Muntadas says. Instead of the traditional idea of a monument as a statue in a public space, he launched a dozen medals titled Portable monuments to anonymous Filipino migrant workers. The recipients come from different cities around the world, including Barcelona, ​​London, and New York, and were chosen by members of their community.