Explore the poetic and political force of objects

Since April 25, those who wish can visit the second exhibition of the cycle Digues, cosa. Joan Brossa and object poems at the Centre de les Arts Lliures of the Fundació Joan Brossa. The exhibition, titled “The entrance to a forest”, takes as its starting point two object poems by the Catalan poet, playwright, and visual artist which, despite their commemorative nature, we could classify as counter-monuments.

Why? Firstly, because they move away from the narrative and formal grandiloquence of conventional monuments, and secondly, because they contribute to the restoration of the memory of the victims rather than the celebration of the victors. To emphasize this inversion, the exhibition brings into dialogue sculptural, photographic, and sound works by artists such as Tomaso Binga, Jason Dodge, León Ferrari and Ricardo Pons, Esther Ferrer, Annette Frick, Ruoxi Jin, Liz Magor, Bruno Pélassy, and Julia Spínola, works that, by addressing the notion of remembrance, permanence, and absence, shun epic and monolithic formalism.

In the words of Marc Navarro, curator of the cycle, the differential value of “L’entrada a un bosc” lies “in the dialogue it establishes between Joan Brossa's object poems and the work of a series of artists who, similarly, deploy the poetic and political force of the object”. On this occasion, the works gathered contain references to memory and the representation of the absent body. They are commemorative objects, “but they avoid the grandiloquence of the monument.” At the same time, he adds, “a series of works present organic and vegetable motifs, signs of patient vitality: almost as if one could not exist without the other.” 

Transdisciplinary approach “By taking a transdisciplinary approach, the exhibition broadens the notion of object”, highlights Navarro. And he illustrates this with the example of an object, “which can be both the trigger for an action or event and the subject of a poem, or even a represented object that does not exist, as is the case with Joan Brossa's sketch for the monument to Federico García Lorca”. 

The exhibition seeks, however, to be a space for discovery and deepening, as it includes works by artists who had never been presented in the city and, at the same time, it is an opportunity to review the work of Joan Brossa. In this regard, the curator of the cycle in which it is framed points out, “the exhibition does not aim to propose a rigid or excessively directed reading, but rather seeks for each person to make their own journey and develop their own play of correspondences between the objects”. Navarro emphasizes that a large part of the pieces “contain clearly anti-war, anti-fascist, or anti-imperialist messages”. And it is that, he concludes, “even though they were made decades ago, the current geopolitical context means that they still appeal to us very directly and propose a reading of our present”.