The oval room, the large public square of the MNAC, has become in recent years a stimulating area for experimentation and artistic creation. Francesc Torres hung upside down a Republican bomber (specifically, a Soviet Civil War SB-82 Tupolev) as if it were St. Peter on the Cross; the American choreographer William Forsythe installed a giant castle inside which the audience was involved in a collective Saint Vito dance thanks to the movements of others; Antoni Miralda suspended from the ceiling the ceiling of the wedding ceremony between Columbus and the Statue of Liberty that he himself had officiated in Las Vegas in 1992; Fito Conesa made the organ sound again, which had been silent since 1974…
Now it is the turn of Laia Estruch (Barcelona, ??1981), who has taken advantage of the invitation to intervene in the gigantic space to also think on a large scale. Halfway between sculpture, performance and musical instrument, the artist has created a living and habitable organism. A huge inflatable creature, Trena, inside which visitors can circulate as if they were the blood flow of the museum itself.
A playful and festive work, which proposes a joyful and sensual experience that has basically to do with intimacy, but which accumulates many other layers of meaning. It is made up of three braided tubes of 2.2 meters in diameter and 35 meters long and wants to bring to the surface “things that cannot be seen, the inside of our bodies, all the braiding of nerves and veins, but also the tubes, channels and cables that cross the earth, both for electricity and the internet, that are under the sea, and it seems like a crazy thing to me”, explains Estruch, who confesses that he has fought throughout the process to avoid “that it remains like a water park or a children’s park”.
The visitor can only travel through one of the tubes. The second is reserved for the artist, who will give performances on July 17 and September 3, on the occasion of the closing of the installation. The third is traversed by the sound of engines and a piece of music that is activated on the hour, produced in collaboration with the composer Xavi Lloses.
For Àlex Mitrani, curator of modern and contemporary art at the museum, Trena is a worthy heir to Hon (“She”, in Swedish), the joyful 23-meter female figure created by Niki de Saint Phalle in 1966, in whose interior (lungs, heart, stomach…) the public accessed through the vagina. An orifice in the shape of a female sexual organ is also the entrance (and exit) of the inflatable, which also recalls the utopian architecture of the Instant City created in 1971 in Ibiza on the occasion of the ICSID congress. “The artist has pushed himself to the limit and he has pushed us to the limit as a museum”, confesses Lluís Alabern, who explains that up to eight industrialists gave up on making the piece.
“It is not easy to be an artist”, admits Estruch, who has been able to work in collaboration with an engineer facilitated by the MNAC. “Being an artist is a constant struggle, all my colleagues know that. And to be given an opportunity like this is very valuable, I will remember it for the rest of my life. Having this opportunity at school, to learn, to relate to other professionals, is what allows you to build muscle and jump to another stage”.
