Madrid (EFE).- PhotoEspaña 2023 officially opens this Wednesday an edition with more than a hundred exhibitions that revolve around three thematic axes that intertwine and dialogue with each other: art, environment and gender, with exhibitions by artists such as Marina Abramovic or Louis Stettner.
Almost all the samples can be seen in Madrid, but also in other cities such as Valladolid, Zaragoza, Santander, Barcelona and Almería.
In the Círculo de Bellas Artes of the capital, the female gaze will be made visible in the exhibition “Vanitas”, by the Serbian artist Marina Abramović; “This is my history… of art”, by the French Orlan; “The tree woman, the water woman”, by Fina Miralles, and “Like a whirlwind” by the couple of 19th century Norwegian photographers Marie Høeg and Bolette Berg. They will be joined by “Cowboy’s Dream”, by Antoni Miralda.
Abramovic’s exhibition traces the obsession with death
According to Sydney Fishman, curator of “Vanitas”, Abramović’s exhibition traces “the collective obsession with death” exploring themes such as “empty”, “darkness”, “light” or “evil” in a tribute to María Callas for the centenary of her birth: “Like me, she was a Sagittarius. Like me, she had a terrible mother, ”Fishman stated, paraphrasing the artist.
Orlan reviews his career in his exhibition through a series of youthful poses to which the “collages” will be added with which, adding his features to portraits of Dora Maar made by Picasso, he celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of her death of the painter
In the case of Miralles, “The tree woman, the water woman”, will show, according to the curator Teresa Grandas, “an approximation to the work of the late sixties”, where the inclusion of natural elements begins to be a common feature in the photographs of the artist, of which she has assured that she is “enormously excited and very grateful”.
“Like a whirlwind” will show for the first time in Spain the Norwegian photographers and suffragettes of the 19th century, Marie Høeg and Bolette Berg, in whose private archive images have been found that show their relationship as a couple while they recreate traditional scenes disguised in the attire masculine of the time.
american customs
“Cowboy’s Dream” will bring the viewer closer to scenes of American customs from the mid-sixties and early seventies in 114 images, among which the series “Nightmare’s Chappelle” stands out, dedicated to the figure of the plastic soldier, a recurring element in the work of Miralda.
The female presence will also be highlighted in the sample of the American Alice Austen at the Museum of Romanticism, where snapshots showing the marginalization of women or the importance of instruments such as the bicycle, a symbol of emancipation and abandonment of home
The work of photographers such as Joana Biarnés will also be reflected with the exhibition “Fashion”; Imogen Cunningham, Sanja Iveković and Francesca Woodman with “Somebodies”; the exhibition of the collective “How to be a photographer” in the Lázaro Galdiano museum or the Mariví Ibarrola collection with “I shot in the 80s”, which shows snapshots taken on the streets of crucial moments of the Madrid scene.
Louis Stettner Retrospective
The festival will have other participating establishments such as the Mapfre Foundation, where the largest retrospective to date on the American Louis Stettner will take place, with one hundred and eighty debut photographs in Spain in which they alternate from empty urban environments, scenes from the New York or the massif of the Alpilles.
It will share space with “Image Cities”, by Anastasia Samoylova, where the planes of the photographs will be superimposed creating images that resemble “collages” in which the human figure is absent or at a minimal scale compared to the grandeur of buildings and advertisements.
The Picasso Museum of Barcelona will collaborate fully in this edition with the exhibition “Picasso en foto”, which already occupies the Fernán Gómez theater: in it, in addition to snapshots of photos of artists linked to the painter, almost the entire graphic archive will be shown related to the man from Malaga, which includes family photographs.
PHotoEspaña will address the issue of the environment, represented in exhibitions such as “Shifting Shades”, which will show the importance of nature in the Arab world, or “De arboris perennis”, on the role of the tree in the city through images by José Manuel Ballester , who inaugurates the contest in the Botanical Garden.
Illustrious photographers such as Martin Chambi or Bernard Plossu (who will be present at the opening of his exhibition) will have samples in a contest that will also hold events in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), Zaragoza and Santander to return promptly to Madrid in November with an exhibition Dedicated to Ramón y Cajal.