Fons #07: Dora García
MACBA’s Audiovisual Documentation Fonds features a series of interviews with artists represented in the MACBA Collection.
Dora García invites viewers to participate in her work by taking sides on questions that are often ethically controversial. Through a variety of media and a wide range of documentation, she asks them to commit themselves to a detailed examination of complex issues. With a research-based practice, she encourages viewers to take a personal stand on the history of some anti-institutional movements, such as anti-psychiatry, the figure of the artist as an outsider, or the cultural mechanisms for the production of meaning.
The Joycean society | Exhausted Books
Dora García takes as her starting point one of the most cryptic works in world literature, Finnegans Wake. Published in 1939, James Joyce’s last novel is one of the best literary representations of the unconscious with a circular text that imposes a never-definitive hermeneutics. Her video The Joycean Society brings out the highest virtues of conversational practice, literary interpretation and the production of meaning.
Frase d'or (Ella té molts noms) [Golden Sentence (She Has Many Names)]
In 2001, Dora García began her long series Frases d'or using letters inscribed with gold leaf on walls or printed on T-shirts. While the golden colour gives the phrases a certain material preciousness, the themes are always linked to common sense. Although some are taken from well-known figures such as Albert Einstein, most have been proposed by the artist.
