This publication presents the work of the multidisciplinary artist Mari Chordà (Amposta, 1942), who uses images, language and social action, elements inherent in her life, as the material of her oeuvre. Chordà the artist, poet and activist are intertwined into a conjoined whole that underpins the stance and convictions that lie at the heart of her work and life story.
Guided by her unwavering social, political and cultural commitment, Chordà set up Lo Llar cultural centre in Amposta and, with a group of other women, later founded laSal, Bar-biblioteca feminista, a feminist bar and library, and laSal, edicions de les dones, a publishing house specialising in literature and essays written by and for women. Chordà was also a pioneer in her generation to express free female sexuality and to address pleasure, motherhood and lesbian relationships in her painting and in her poetry.
This publication contains an extensive selection of Chordà’s pictorial and poetic work, as well as a biography that charts her feminist and cultural activism. In addition, it includes a foreword by Elvira Dyangani Ose, the Director of the MACBA; an essay by Teresa Grandas, the exhibition curator, in which she analyses the formal and political aspects that run through the artist’s work; an article written by Mar Arza on the ambiguity between art and toys; an essay by Claudia Elies that considers Chordà’s poetry from a visual perspective and in relation to the practice of younger artists; an essay by Andrea Soto Calderón, who presents a more philosophical reading of the artist; and a piece written by Conxa Llinàs Carmona, who gives us insights into her experience as a fellow traveller, friend and comrade in arms of Chordà.
