nyamnyam & Pedro Pineda
nyamnyam. Formed in 2012 by Ariadna Rodríguez (Barcelona, 1980) and Iñaki Álvarez (Vic, 1975). Live in Mieres. Pedro Pineda (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1985. Lives in Barcelona).
Notes for an Eye Fire exhibition views. Photo: Miquel Coll
nyamnyam and Pedro Pineda’s project for the exhibition is a new iteration and a genealogy of A quatre potes (2014–ongoing), a project founded on the principle that in order to share a meal or have a discussion you first have to build a table to sit at.
Leading up to and during the exhibition, a group of people with diverse roles within the MACBA are participating in a series of co-design and collaborative making workshops that began with the purchase of several tree trunks from a sustainable forestry initiative in the nearby Montnegre massif.
Having been transformed into planks and laths at the shared machine shop TMDC, this locally sourced wood is being adapted in the gallery by the museum workers into a range of tables, benches, and other structures. This furniture acts as a mediator between natural and human resources, creating different social settings throughout the course of the exhibition and becoming the scenography and motive for a series of discussions around practices of collectivity and cultures of sustainability within and beyond the institutional walls.
Making of
Photos: Latitudes and Hiuwai Chu
Activities
About nyamnyam and Pedro Pineda
nyamnyam is an arts collective and collaborative force that focuses on ways of working above and beyond making works by creating context and process before—or instead of—production or presentation. Drawing on its founders’ backgrounds in music, dance and theatre (Ariadna Rodríguez) and filmmaking and visual arts (Iñaki Álvarez), nyamnyam launched a series of events in Barcelona for artists to share their practice, as well as running workshops on food sovereignty. nyamnyam has since fermented into a free-ranging interdisciplinary practice and para-institution that is active across the visual arts, social design, community advocacy, curating, experimental education, live art and hosting. Since 2019 it has had its own base at Mas nyamnyam, in the village of Mieres, in the province of Girona. Developed with designer Pedro Pineda, A quatre potes (2014–ongoing) starts with the principle that in order to share a meal or have a discussion you first have to build a table to sit at. It then turns to co-design and collective furniture making for solutions, an experience which in turn creates its own scenography for participatory knowledge and learning about the dynamics of local materials, the commons and access to tools.
nyamnyam was set up by Ariadna Rodríguez and Iñaki Álvarez in 2012. In 2021 their performative installation 8.000 años después and their stage piece Siempre Siempre, with Carme Torrent, were presented at ICl–CCN, Montpellier; La Caldera, Barcelona; and Festival Sismògraf, Olot. In 2020 and 2021 they designed educational programmes for DAS Theater, Amsterdam; Teatre l’Artesà, El Prat de Llobregat; and the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (Valencia). They are co-curators of the 2021 and 2022 editions of the performing arts–focused Sâlmon Festival in Barcelona. nyamnyam.net
Pedro Pineda designs what he describes as ‘holistic, intended physical experiences’. He has co-developed numerous collaborative and participatory design projects, including MakerLab (2010–2013) and the Barcelona branch of the coworking environment betahaus (2013–2016). In 2016 Pineda cofounded the shared machine shop TMDC in Barcelona’s La Verneda neighbourhood. tmdc.es
