Over a thousand reasons to open a book Antònia del Río’s proposal for Expurgation #4. One Thousand and Twenty-One Reasons

Out of curiosity. Because it looks interesting. For the plot. For the title. Because someone recommended it to me. Because I like reading. To compare opinions. Or even to heal myself. Antònia del Río asked visitors to the exhibition Bibliotecas insólitas (Unusual Libraries: La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2017; Arts Santa Mònica, Barcelona, 2018) to write down the reasons why they had picked one of the 6,800 books that she had put on display. Taken from the library holdings of La Casa Encendida, the artist had ‘expurgated’ them to make them available to the public. The action is part of the long-term project Expurgation, begun in 2011, which reflects on the expurgation of books in libraries. Organised in categories, Antònia del Río collected the reasons left behind by the visitors in an artist's book held in the MACBA Collection, throwing light on the multiple reasons that lead us to the inexhaustible act of reading.