VOW OF SHADOWS: Haptic Awakenings, Exciting the Senses

Joan Morey reflects on the roles of power and control over the body, gender inequalities and mystical escape in this performance that can be followed live through the Instagram accounts of the artist, MACBA and the Fundació Joan Brossa. 

VOW OF SHADOWS is a transversal multidisciplinary project by Joan Morey (Mallorca, 1972) which takes as its starting point the practice of voluntary walling in of women who lived between the 12th and 16th centuries within religious institutions, and the transfer of this phenomenon to rooms that are hyper-connected by means of new information and communications technology. In this creation, the artist explores the metaphor of walling in to establish connections between the body and architecture, reclusion and connectivity, spirituality and desire. In this context, technology and social networks serve to underline how these universal themes are profoundly linked to the politics of bodies and the construction of identities in our globalised era. 

The project consists of a latent exhibition at the Fundació Joan Brossa and a performance fragmented into three episodes, to take place in three different locations. The final part of the performance is to take place in the Capella MACBA under the title VOW OF SHADOWS: Haptic Awakenings, Exciting the Senses. MACBA invites you to follow the performance live through the Instagram accounts of the artist, MACBA and the Fundació Joan Brossa. Enjoy an online multi-camera broadcast that will allow you to explore the work from different points of view depending on which account you choose. 

Connect: @macba_barcelona, @fundaciobrossa o @joanmorey 

Find out more about the project. 

artist

Joan Morey

Mallorca, 1972

Born in Mallorca in 1972, Joan Morey studied Fine Art at the Universitat de Barcelona, and currently resides in that city. His work explores the language of performance to generate and stage events in which one or more interpreters are subject to a rigid system of instructions and norms. Viewers can then extrapolate these guidelines in relation to their daily life and to the role power structures and micropolitics play in our lives. Morey’s performances focus on concepts such as perversion, dependence, fear, nihilism, rebellion and tedium. In the late nineties, he was known by the acronym STP (standing for: I am your whore), presenting his performances under this name and creating a fertile contamination between art, fashion and advertising. By instrumentalising the creative act, he reveals the dependence of artistic creation on power and market structures.

He has presented his projects at the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona (2006); Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela (2007); Capella de la Misericòrdia, Palma de Mallorca (2010); Fabra i Coats, Barcelona (2012); MACBA, Barcelona (2013); Museu Es Baluard, Palma de Mallorca (2015); and Centre de Cultura Contemporànea de Barcelona (2017).

joanmorey.tumblr.com [last consulted: 06/02/2019]

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