Art Exhibit: Turbulances

All turbulence provokes, shakes and unsettles. It is a sudden movement that awakens our conscience and sharpens our senses. Starting with the state of sudden unrest created by turbulence, this exhibition explores the role of contemporary art in the face of the conflicts and instabilities that characterize our globalized world; in it, the artists launch a critical look at the world we live in, and examine its contradictions.  

Curated by Nimfa Bisbe, head of CaixaForum’s art collections, the exhibition presents twenty works, a number of which have entered the permanent collection in recent years and half of which had never been on display before in Barcelona. The artists included are: Equipo Crónica, Walter Dahn, José Damasceno, Smadar Dreyfus, Dionís Escorsa, Nir Evron, Harun Farocki, Pedro G. Romero, Ana Garcia-Pineda, Thomas Hirschhorn, Anselm Kiefer, Guillermo Kuitca, Antoni Muntadas, Paulo Nazareth, Damián Ortega, Walid Raad, Sophie Ristelhueber, Juan Ugalde and Bill Viola.

Many artists have asked themselves, “What is art capable of?” To do this, they shape their observations, interests and speculations with a great capacity to produce some kind of critical awareness. Artists detach themselves from prejudice to transcend traditional boundaries of art. In this way, they delve into social and cultural reality and offer points of view that are provocative and surprising. Artists cannot change what they dislike of our world, but their works can act as triggers capable of opening our eyes — which is just what turbulence does as well.

The critical development of the representation of reality by art in recent decades has led artists to question traditional war iconography and to speculate on the visualization of violence (Walid Raad). However, the “game of war” is found in the origins of our visual culture and its formalization experiences an infinite evolution. If chess is the ultimate abstraction of confrontation and control of terrain (José Damasceno), new technologies have transformed war into virtual reality. Animation programs and video game — which are used to train troops and/or provide therapeutic treatment for soldiers — have turned the terrible violence of a battle into fictional imagery. Computer-simulated combat reduces the anguish and anxiety that is produced by any type of destruction, resulting in indifference (Harun Farocki). In a text about the work of Farocki, the French essayist Georges Didi-Huberman asks why and how the production of images participates in the destruction of human beings.

In the middle of the reverberation of these images, rises the installation Mother’s Day, which concentrates the emotional impact on the sound of the voice. Created as a sound environment, the image acts as a pause for silence, and the darkness acts as an insulator for words that express the conflict of imposed separation. These voices are those of a population that lives divided by a border, their identity negated and nationality unrecognized. Artist Smadar Dreyfus does not comment on the conflict; she tries to allow the reality of this community to penetrate the consciousness of the viewer through the intimacy of listening. On another screen, artist Ana Garcia-Pineda talks about the life of words. They draw the memory of a forced exile and create a biographical account that is part of our collective history.

Artists are witnesses of their time, and the history of art is witness to their observations. Some artists use irony to warn about the vulnerability of the current global economy. Others point to the erosion of nationalist ideals or depict the suffering and loneliness in cities. Despite the shadows cast by these works, the artists underscore the fragility that lies behind marginalization. They point out the solidarity that allows us to overcome the turbulence of our world and reveal the redeeming power of the artistic metaphor.