About Felix Gonzalez-Torres. The Politics of Relation Inaugural activity
To mark the inauguration of the exhibition Felix Gonzalez-Torres. The Politics of Relation, we invited Agustín Pérez Rubio to present part of his research about the artist and his work. Together with Andrea Rosen, President of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, there will be a discussion of the exhibition with Tanya Barson, curator of the exhibition and Chief Curator of the MACBA.
*Your ticket to the inaugural event includes a visit to the exhibition in the 7:30 pm time slot.
Programme
Thursday 25 March
6:00 p.m. Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Subversion and resistance strategies.
Presentation by Agustín Pérez Rubio
Felix Gonzalez-Torres was a perfect expert on language games and their power, from the standpoint of his colonial matrix. His work is an infiltration into hegemonic mechanisms, intended to make their scope implode from within. Highly aware of the experiential impact that being a migrant child had on him, as well as of his learning as a Caribbean artist, he confronted the fact that the importance of and references to his experiences in Cuba, Spain or Puerto Rico were blurred by the absorption of his work by the art criticism system and the North American market. This presentation will follow a trail of clues for a hypothetical reinterpretation of the artist’s life and work, with a decolonial and queer theory approach as a backdrop. The objective is to shed light on the methodological interests that helped him construct a body of subversion and resistance strategies to those hegemonic powers on a personal and affective basis.
6:30 - 7:30 p.m. Gestures of identification and misidentification.
Conversation about the exhibition
Andrea Rosen, President of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, and Tanya Barson, exhibition curator and Chief Curator of MACBA. The conversation is in English.
Biographies
Agustín Pérez Rubio, Valencia, 1972. Historian, teacher and researcher with extensive curatorial work in museums and institutions in Latin America and Europe. He has resolved to rethink decoloniality, both in the field of museums and in that of dissident sexual practices based on feminist and queer theory. Together with María Berríos, Lisette Lagnado and Renata Cervetto, he was the curator of the 11th Berlin Biennale (2019-20). Previously he had been the curator of the Chile Pavilion and the 58th Biennale di Venezia (2019). He was also the Artistic Director of the MALBA (Buenos Aires, 2014-18), Chief Curator and Director of the MUSAC (Leon, 2003-13) and a Member of the Board of the CIMAM and the Istanbul Biennial (2017-22). Recently he received the honour of being a guest professor at the Institute for Art in Context (Berlin University of the Arts, 2019-20).
Andrea Rosen, President, The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation; President, Andrea Rosen Gallery. Andrea Rosen opened Andrea Rosen Gallery in 1990 with a seminal exhibition of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and has for more than 30 years advocated for some of the most important artists of our time. She is the executrix of the Estate of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and in 2002 she established the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation. In 2017, Andrea Rosen Gallery closed its physical space in order to concentrate on the representation of Gonzalez-Torres, and to function as a conduit for identifying, supporting, and working to help others create rigorous experiential programming, flexible economic models, and non-object-based practices.
If you have any question, feel free to contact us on 93 481 33 68 or by email at macba [at] macba [dot] cat
