Collectable

What is a museum? How far does the institution go?

Dora García revisits the work she carried out at MACBA in 2003

work
Dora García

Frase d'or (Ella té molts noms)

Twenty years ago, Dora García presented a performative experiment at MACBA that questioned preconceived ideas about what constitutes an institution: The Kingdom. For a month and a half, she left a novel at the entrance to the Museum, in the atrium, with the title El Reino. The Kingdom.

Structured in days and hours, she explained what would happen in the Museum during the period of her intervention. It could be read like a novel or as if it were a performance programme that explained what would happen at each moment (such as, for example, the Museum opening at eleven in the morning, or someone shouting in the atrium at two o’clock in the afternoon). The events were rated and ranked from ‘impossible’ to ‘supernatural’. The participants of The Kingdom were performers scripted by the artist, together with the people who worked in the Museum, some of the works on display and elements of the building such as the camera located in the atrium. García values the effects of a project that, as she explains, can be reactivated at any time: ‘It was a work with a very strong anti-institutional component that found great support and great resistance.’ Don’t miss the artist’s complete reflection in the new interview that has just been published.