We must admit that when we learned that Carles Guerra was presenting a new exhibition entitled “
This is not an exhibition
” at the Huarte Art Center, we didn’t pay too much attention. We thought then that it would be some conceptual pun by which “This is not an exhibition” would indeed be an exhibition. But no, the title aspires to a certain literalness and it can be said that the project by Carles Guerra (in collaboration with Imanol Aguirre) is not, or at least does not intend to be, an exhibition. According to the center’s website:
“The works presented do not aspire to be mere objects of contemplation, but to circulate and be transported to other spaces, places and institutions. Their ultimate purpose is to be debated by specific audiences. In short, this exhibition aspires to be an anti-exhibition that transforms the room into a resource center for the closest users. […]
Thus, the exhibition is installed in the rooms of the Huarte Center, although some of its pieces can also be found outside of it. The displacement of activities to schools and the fact that the usual logistics that characterize the organization of an exhibition have been dismissed make this project an experience aimed at rethinking the art center as a public service.”
And even more:
“The users of the art center are free to choose those [works] that they want to take to their home or school, as well as to any other place, to discuss them and maintain with them a relationship that is often not possible in the context of the exhibition hall.”
The project raises at least one displacement that seems interesting to us, although it contains some dangers on which we have had to reflect lately: displacing the places through which art circulates and is received can be an effective strategy to democratize access to culture and avoid disciplinary regimes that subtly operate in architecture and museum habits. However, “bringing art closer to the school” (or wherever) literally, can become a device to ‘illustrate’ and a form of “cultural proselytism”, if not directly marketing (a resource to attract visitors to the museum). It does not seem that this is the case of “This is not an exhibition“, we intuit that the works contributed by the artists are used as a pretext to open the dialogue on different issues: Many of these works present a theme close to the events that we follow through the media. That’s why the exhibition […] brings together to a greater extent works of a documentary nature“. It seems to us that it would be interesting to review how these issues relate to the context in which they are going to be treated and to what extent the project makes explicit the positions occupied by the different agents involved, and how these positions determine the value of their discourses.
Technorati Tags: art, education, exhibition, huarte