Using art to focus on stigmatized and invisible groups has been a constant in Antoni Abad’s career. He has done it with taxi drivers from Mexico City, Saharawi refugees, gypsies from Lleida, prostitutes from Madrid or Central American migrants. In his latest video installation, Deaf Ears, he approaches people with hearing diversity through video art, in order to “establish bridges of understanding to convey how the world is perceived when abilities are diverse.”
The video installation is part of the Multiverso initiative, promoted by the BBVA Foundation and the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, which seeks to disseminate video art and digital art through a program that includes relevant projections and Multiverso grants.
Antoni Abad has been one of the artists who has received support from this initiative to display his video installations with social content. Deaf Ears translates into a video installation that includes 16 videos and audios aimed at giving visibility to deaf people.
The work is based on the premise that hearing people are located in a position far removed from the perceptions of those who have hearing diversity. “We don’t know what their perceptions are,” Abad said. From there, he proposes building bridges to promote an understanding.
It does so through audiovisuals that follow one another in two large simultaneous projections, with transcriptions in Braille and subtitles, in which a series of people, all of them deaf, can be seen having conversations in sign language.
They talk about art, humor, sex, depression, communication, utopia, inclusion, deaf culture, urban and rural, employment, associationism, truth and lies, happiness and sadness. , or anarchy and dictatorship.
The audios of these works reproduce the sounds emitted by the people who participate in these conversations, and are accompanied by these subtitles, the transcriptions in Braille or the sign language itself. “There is an intense amalgamation of expression codes, to configure an environment where the dialogues of the participants can reach that desired place that we call eloquence”, explains Abad.
The Multiverso program translates into two lines of action. On the one hand, since 2017, two Video Art and Digital Creation programs have been jointly developed, which have allowed the public to show productions by artists such as Beatriz Caravaggio, Álvaro Perdices and Andrés Sanz, Víctor Erice or Antoni Muntadas.
In addition, the Multiverso scholarships are supporting the artistic creation of different creators. The works of Josu Rekalde and Ana Laura Aláez have already been exhibited. Now, after a break forced by the pandemic, the Museum of Fine Arts will host the exhibition of the creations of Antoni Abad, Toni Serra, Mabel Palacín, Nadia Hotait, Manu Arregui, and Pedro G. Romero.
Antoni Abad’s video installation can be visited until May 7. From there, the Asemanastan sample. The Land of the Skies, by Toni Serra, will take over from May 16. The rest of the artists awarded scholarships within the Multiverso initiative will follow.
The Bilbao Fine Arts Museum intends with this type of initiative to maintain the artistic interest of the museum at a time when it is facing an ambitious expansion project, led by Norman Foster, which requires keeping a part of the gallery closed. The director of the Bilbao Fine Arts, Miguel Zugaza, spoke of a “miniaturized museum” that, nevertheless, works to continue attracting visitors.
