Killing the Monster. Some Dragons in the Collective Imaginary
The medieval imaginary was full of flying dragons that abducted damsels and brave knights that rescued them. It was a way of combating fear and the threats of the real world. In our contemporary imaginary, there are no dragons and princesses, yet we continue to be threatened by overwhelming dangers. Inner monsters, climate disasters, social breakdowns, wars… This year, we wish to celebrate Saint Jordi by starting a series that will allow us to conjure, from the world of art, some of the monsters that threaten us. To feel empowered in the knowledge that, together, we can kill the dragon. A series that invites us to conquer fear with words and the collective agency, with ideas and the necessary frame of mind to change the status quo.
The Moroccan-French artist Latifa Echakhch recovers the stencils that were used to print messages of protest and revolution in the 1960s. The title of her installation À chaque stencil une révolution (For Each Stencil a Revolution, 2007) is a literal quote from a discourse pronounced in the 1990s by Yasser Arafat, first president of the Palestinian National Authority and champion of peace in the Middle East. Happy Saint Jordi’s Day!
MACBA Collection
The MACBA Collection focuses on the art of the period spanning the second half of the twentieth century to the present. Without ignoring the specificity of any moment, it centres on what the notion of artistic contemporaneity and its multiplicity of languages has meant during the last decades.
