Collectable

The maquis of Francesc Torres

collectable

Francesc Torres’ installation Amnesia/Memory pays tribute to members of the maquis, popular idols of the resistance movement that fought against the Franco regime in Catalonia. Thirteen large portraits hang on the wall. Victims of silence, their absence from official history has helped turn them into legendary characters. While the portraits of these honoured guerrillas maintain the character of police mug shots, on the gallery floor Torres arranges some large cast-iron letters forming the word ‘amnesia’, together with the projection of individual letters spelling out the word ‘memory’.

Torres represents the two sides of a collective attitude towards the past: intentional and political oblivion, in the face of memory as a way of avoiding the mistakes of the past. As the artist explained in 1991: ‘All of them internationalists. All of them died in Catalonia. (…) There can be no historical awareness without images. Historical consciousness is mainly visual.’ Now you can see this work from the MACBA Collection at the exhibition Another End. THE REMAINDER. Art and anti- Francoism in El Born Cultural and Memorial Centre in Barcelona.