Those who pass through the Meier building next year will find a Macba “more critical, more ecofeminist, more social and more participatory,” according to the museum’s director, Elvira Dyangani Ose, who this Tuesday presented its new programming for 2024 coinciding with with the inauguration of 108 days, a proposal by the Algerian artist Lydia Ourahmane through which a hundred people and groups will occupy the museum tower during the 108 days that the exhibition will last. A Macba, therefore, that also wants to be more collaborative and permeable and that opens its doors to the “social landscape” of the artist, resident in Barcelona since 2021, to see what “that social landscape that she has known can say.” of ourselves and how that Barcelona can be transferred to the exhibition halls,” argues Dyangani Ose.
Advancing on the path of that Possible Museum, which the director conceives as a “transformative” project that has an effect on people and society, with the aim of making it freer and promoting a critical spirit, the 2024 program also means a 180-degree turn towards the local scene, with three large monographic exhibitions dedicated to the Catalans Jordi Colomer (curated by Martí Peran and will run from May to September) and Mari Chordà (from July to January, curated by Teresa Grandas) and to the Teresa Solar from Madrid, one of the most notable presences at the last Venice Biennale (from October to February, in a co-production with the CA2M of Madrid whose curators are Claudia Segura and Tania Pardo). The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo of Turin also participates in the production of the latter.
Barcelona itself, seen from the neighborhoods that emerged from the wave of post-war migration, will be the protagonist of an ambitious photographic project curated by Jorge Ribalta that crosses the entire periphery, from Besòs to the Marina, passing by Carmel or Turó de la Rovira , through the eyes of thirteen photographers, including Laia Abril, Jeff Wall, José Luis Guerín, Pedro G. Romero, Gregori Civera, Bleda
Although small in format, the first exhibition of the year will arrive on March 1 (until June 26) by the curator, poet and art critic Juan Bufill, who will offer a retrospective, first-person look at the historic Visual magazine (1977-1978), which during a short but fruitful period of time published the collective FIV (Film Video Informació), of which Bufill himself was a part along with Eugènia Balcells, Eugeni Bonet, Carles Hac Mor, Manuel Huerga, Ignacio Julia and Luis Serra). Beyond the publication itself, the exhibition will also incorporate visual works and experimental cinema made by some of its protagonists.
International participation will come through the figure of the American trans filmmaker and performer Wu Tsang (Worcester, 1982) who, in collaboration with TAB 21 and within the next Grec festival, will present Carmen, a review of the multiple meanings around Bizet’s protagonist (“a symbol of freedom and at the same time a conduit for misogyny”) through a film filmed in Seville starring Rocío Molina, Vanessa Montoya and Yinka Esi Graves.
The presentation of the collection will also be transformed, with new additions, and halfway between public program and exhibition, María Berrios, director of Conservation and Research at the museum, and Sabel Gavaldón, its new head of Programs, will develop two projects, Song for many movements. Scenarios of collective creation and [counter] panorama, which will activate the museum’s Atrium as a meeting and dialogue point.
The museum, which to date has received 208,000 visitors, 10% more than last year. It will have a budget of 13,025,070 euros, of which 1.9 come from its own income and the rest from contributions from the administrations that are part of the consortium (City Hall, Generalitat and Ministry of Culture). Of this amount, 1.9 are allocated to programming exhibitions and public programs, while 5.7 are for personnel expenses and 3.6 for building maintenance.