Contemporary art from the eyes of the monster 

De animales y monstruos
Rather than succumbing to the temptation of a sentimental ecology or an anthropoligisation of animal nature, Deleuze and Derrida suggested conceiving it as an anomalous, liminal phenomenon, not in terms of boundaries. This book attempts to re-open the question of the animal and the monster exploring the area between thought and artistic practice, while examining their relationship to ideas of identity and community. It also studies the role played by ideas of the animal and the monster as signifiers of transformation and marginalisation directed towards specific groups. 

Can subordinates speak?
Nobody who is interested in issues of gender, race or class can ignore the provocative thesis that the Indian thinker Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak formulates in her text “Can the Subaltern Speak?” which sparked a heated debate that still continues today: Manuel Asensi Pérez, who translated the text, provides critical commentaries that make this at times cryptic work accessible to lay readers. 

Son[i]a 59 #Beatriz Preciado sobre “art after feminism”.
This time, “queer theory” serves as a platform upon which to establish an attempt to transform art into a political and cultural practice to produce subjectivity within the public sphere, in counterpoint to the often-claimed – yet inoperable – autonomy of art. Son[i]a speaks with Beatriz Preciado, a coordinator working within the MACBA’s Independent Studies Programme (PEI). 

Son[i]a 42 #Patricia Soley-Beltrán. 
Radicalising the theoretical instruments created by Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Beauvoir and Wittig, Judith Butler proposed one of the most incisive philosophical readings on gender and sexual identity at the end of the 1980s. The MACBA has taken advantage of her lecture visit to devote a conference, a lecture-workshop and a class to her and to analyse her life and work. Likewise, SON[I]A speaks with Patricia Soley-Bertán, head of the course “Theory and praxis: Judith Butler’s thinking”, about her work and philosophy. 

Imatges de zoo. Fina Miralles  
In 1974, Fina Miralles presented her exhibition Imatges del zoo (Zoo Images) at the Sala Vinçon in Barcelona. Zoos were initially intended to be places where wild and unknown animals were shown to the public: they demonstrate human supremacy over creatures and humans’ power over animals. Here Miralles subverts the established order and overturns the usual categories: wild and exotic animals are displayed in photographs, while the cages are occupied by animals found in home environments and by the artist herself. 

MIMÉTISME RELATIF – Femme panthère, 1973-1976   
The artist questions the examples of female identity in consumer society and the idea of desire. The combination of the role of the model and the artist emphasises the artificiality of the pin-up image as presented by the media. ‘At a time when feminist movements were denouncing and rejecting the idealisation and objectification of women’s bodies as conveyed by magazines, Selz’s re-appropriation of popular imagery stages the ambiguous desire to both reject and resemble those icons.’ (Elsa Coustou: Dorothée Selz. London: Tate Gallery, September 2015) 

Guerrilla Girls. Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?   
In 1989, the Guerrilla Girls created one of their most emblematic communicative works: a poster with the question ‘Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?’ over the image of a reclining female nude wearing a gorilla mask. The image refers to the well-known picture by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres entitled La Grande Odalisque, 1814 (Louvre Museum, Paris). The gorilla mask is habitually worn by this group of women artists and feminist activists when appearing in public. Located above the image on a yellow background – a colour particularly associated with the Guerrilla Girls – the poster presents the following data: ‘Less than 5% of artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.’