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Falla aquàtica, 1992

Aquatic Falla, 1992

One of Miralda’s most celebrated and longer-lasting works is Honeymoon Project. Made over a period of six years – from 1986 to 1992 – in over twenty cities around the world, it consisted of a series of ceremonial actions celebrating the imaginary and symbolic wedding between two emblematic monuments on either side of the Atlantic, the Statue of Liberty in New York and the monument to Christopher Columbus in the harbour of Barcelona. Located on the same latitude and of similar age, they symbolise the exchange of products, ideas and traditions uniting the Old and New Worlds since 1492. Miralda galvanised thousands of people into generating and participating in over forty actions representing the different stages of a wedding ritual.

One of these actions was the Falla aquàtica (1992), presented in Barcelona during the 1992 Olympic Games. Both the work and the title refer to a tradition of satirical popular monuments that are typical of Valencia: ephemeral monuments paraded in the streets for a few days and later burned in a public celebration. To make Falla aquàtica, Miralda worked in collaboration with the falla master Manolo Martín, with whom he had already collaborated when the city of Valencia made a gift of a pair of jeans to the Statue of Liberty. Given the significance of the torch as a symbol of the Olympic Games, Miralda decided to build an aquatic torch. It consisted of a huge rubber ring with a vertical column made of twenty-five plates referring to the cities that had previously hosted the Games. Each plate bore the name of the city and the year. Barcelona’s was the last one. A cake decorated with the logo of the Barcelona Games, five rings symbolising the five continents and twenty-five birthday candles crowned the torch. The column sat on a half-sunk world globe. Following a debate on the safety of burning the falla, it was finally burned near a harbour wall at the start of the Barcelona Olympic Games, while the official torch was arriving at the same harbour.


Technical details

Original title:
Falla aquàtica
Registration number:
2889
Artist:
Miralda
Date created:
1992
Date acquired:
1999
Fonds:
MACBA Collection. MACBA Foundation
Object type:
Audiovisual recording
Media:
Single-channel video, colour, sound, 8 min
Credits:
MACBA Collection. MACBA Foundation
Copyright:
© Miralda, VEGAP, Barcelona
It has accessibility resources:
No

The MACBA Collection features Catalan, Spanish and international art and, although it includes works from the 1920s onwards, its primary focus is on the period between the 1960s and the present.

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