Deconstructing the Pavilion Los Sujetos. Spanish Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale. A session with Martí Manen

What does curating the Spanish Pavilion in Venice mean? How is the project outlined and defined? What decisions are taken and how does it work in context? Deconstructing the Pavilion is a working session around curatorial practice in times of crisis, utilising bastardised genealogies and understanding the process of representation at the highest level from the transversal communication with independent spaces of contemporary art.

The process of gestation and production of Los Sujetos (The Subjects) raises various questions and aspirations, such as the possibility of understanding sensuality in the exhibition field, reconsidering the idea of an archive from a feminist perspective and assuming an intersectional approach as an option for rewriting. Doubts, fragility and risk also appear.

The working session is presented as a journey from which to observe a pavilion, assuming that the pavilion itself is not only realised in Venice but that, from the moment when the project is selected, it is activated performatively.

Martí Manen is the curator of Los Sujetos, the exhibition proposal presenting until mid-November 2015 the work of Cabello/Carceller, Francesc Ruiz, Pepo Salazar and the performativity of Salvador Dalí.

Martí Manen (Barcelona, 1976). Curator and art critic. He has curated exhibitions at the Museo de Historia Natural (Mexico City), Sala Montcada – Obra Social "La Caixa" (Barcelona), AARA (Bangkok), Sala Rekalde (Bilbao), Konsthall C (Stockholm), La Panera (Lleida) and CA2M (Madrid). With David Armengol he was responsible for the curatorial programme ‘El Text: Principis i Sortides’ (The Text: First Notions and Findings), Fabra i Coats Centre d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona. He is the author of Salir de la exposición (si es que alguna vez habíamos entrado), on the theory of the exhibition process published by Consonni, and Contarlo todo sin saber cómo, a novel that is an exhibition that is a novel, published by CA2M. Awaiting publication is his latest book La exposición emocional. Martí Manen is the curator of the Spanish Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale. For five years he curated exhibitions in his own bedroom (Sala Hab, Barcelona).

Photographic album of the activity 'Deconstructing the Pavilion'