ana maria maiolino - entrevidas - le bastart

The territory and its layers: gender, nature, body

At the time of the great conquests, modern cartographic science was developed. Felipe II, overwhelmed by the vastness of his territories, commissioned to the best geographer of the time to map the world. So, he could take complete control at a glance, and even maybe dreaming of being a Salvator Mundi with the orb in one hand and blessing with the other. The title of this first modern atlas, Theater of the World (Theatrum Orbis […]

laia arqueros - gynopia cerinea - le bastart

Dancing tongues. From Laia Arqueros to Nancy Spero

In Ancient Greece, while the wise and not-so-wise philosophers argued in their endless symposiums, reclining among soft cushions, their wives frolicked in the field, dancing naked, ate cakes shaped like phalluses and sesame vulvas. The truth is that much of their time was spent indoors, but when they left home, they messed it up. Or so we like to imagine it. Robert Graves defined the Athenian Thesmophoria as agricultural orgies, and Laia Arqueros reinvents, again and again, […]

margaret harrison - guernica aleppo - le bastart

Margaret Harrison, humor and courage

London was a hotbed of dissent and underground activity at the end of the sixties, and when it came to surface it was like burning lava. Miss World 1970 will be remembered not so much for the award-winning beauties but for the rain of stink bombs and leaflets on the Royal Albert Hall stage, and for the banners with which young feminists expressed their rejection of that cattle market. Among the activists, there was one […]

francis alys - night watch - le bastart

Fable or laboratory creatures, gods or beasts

News symbiosis between “they and us” Animals have had a privileged place in art since prehistoric times. The figurative painting is born invoking bison and bovids in cave rites. Recent cave discoveries reveal that dog domestication might have started even before the Neolithic. In sedentary societies, religious celebrations and sacrificial rites take over from the hunting rites, while birds and quadrupeds of all kinds take their place in the divine pantheons of the great cultures. The […]

frances goodman - pool party - le bastart

Frances Goodman, about the uncontrollable feminine

Perhaps it is due to a lack of historical perspective, but it seems that feminism, whose stages used to be defined in waves, does not know where to surf, where it is headed. Sucked into the neoliberal maelstrom, the girl power is advertised on the catwalks of Christian Dior, and young women dive like redeemed narcissus into a digital fluidity. The media sells us that the crux of the matter is to debate whether the […]

carlos aires - museo cerralbo - le bastart

Carlos Aires, … don’t worry, be happy…

René Chair already warned: If the man didn’t sometimes close his eyes tightly, he’d end up not seeing what’s worth looking at. Our sleepless eyes can no longer stop looking, plunged into a kind of horror vacui. The blindness grows in line with the overexploitation of the catastrophe. Both themes, the impossibility of seeing and the sense of bewilderment, inspire many of Carlos Aires projects while pointing to a certain stoic hedonism as the spirit of […]

wolf vostell - coche - le bastart

Wolf Vostell, immobile travel among migratory birds

When the temperatures are around 45 degrees, Extremadura is napping until sunset. Shutters remain closed, the streets empty… We have just left behind the small town of Malpartida and we already drive on a path of gravel crossed by capricious granite formations that precede what a little further will make up the curvilinear “skyline” of Los Barruecos. Erosion, a patient sculptor, has been modeling this stone universe over the centuries. When reflected in the pools, […]

sukran moral - hamam - le bastart

Sükran Moral, demolishing rancid traditions

Hypocrisy, a street which both begins and ends in the world, and there is scarcely anyone who doesn’t have, if not a house, then at least rooms or temporary lodgings along the length of it. A suspicious old man and a trusting young one walk to this main street of the world to observe closely habits and customs of their peers. To cross certain thresholds to see The world from inside, as Quevedo did in […]