Ibon Aranberri had not been seen in Barcelona since his individual exhibition at the Tàpies Museum in 2011, then the Tàpies Foundation. A few years later, he has become the first artist to win the Macba Foundation Award, a prize intended to support Spanish and Portuguese contemporary art from Barcelona, but, above all, it seeks to create an excuse for it to be talked about and for its protagonists to be known, with the aim that it is not only said to be too difficult to understand. The award takes the form of one of the museum's icons, Jorge Oteiza's La ola (The Wave), located in front of the main facade and quite heavy, as was confirmed this Tuesday during the presentation.
In this attempt to make it more sexy and glamorous, the award is accompanied by a big party this Tuesday, as other disciplines do, such as cinema, with its widely broadcast festivals and galas, or literature, with literary prizes or a Sant Jordi that put books on everyone's lips. With small exceptions like ARCO, they are rarely seen in the world of contemporary art, points out the president of the Macba Foundation, Ainhoa Grandes, so something had to be organized. This first gala dinner will be held at the Macba itself, with the attendance of some 300 personalities, including authorities such as the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, the Minister of Culture, Sònia Hernández, and the Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau, but also representatives of civil society, such as the director of the Joan Miró Foundation, Marko Daniel, the director of the Tàpies Museum, Imma Prieto, the president of Banco Sabadell, Josep Oliu, and the CEO of Criteria Caixa, Ángel Simón.
Aranberri (Itziar, Guipúzcoa, 1969) receives the award after years of full dedication to the exhibitions Vista Parcial (Partial View), held at the end of 2023 at the Reina Sofia Museum, and Entresaka, in the middle of this year at Atrium Museoa in Vitoria. A process that has not ended, but he feels that the award gives him "encouragement to continue working." Aranberri, who draws from the Basque formalist tradition, still does not know what he will do with the 50,000 euros of the prize, but he points out that they are production facilities to continue creating, now that costs have skyrocketed, as he emphasizes.
The jury, formed by experts such as the director of Macba, Elvira Dyangani Ose, the Culture advisor of the Generalitat Manuel J. Borja-Villel and the director of Reina Sofia, Manuel Segade, has highlighted Aranberri's "capacity to transform the museum's rooms into a space for social imagination". "Each exhibition he undertakes is unique, a seed contained within a shell that has been formed after deep artistic thought and balance between research, politics and history," he added.
The Macba Foundation Award, endowed with 80,000 euros, is designed for artists who are in the middle of their career, a moment that the promoters of the award have detected as the most complicated, past the boom as emerging artists and before widespread recognition for a consolidated career. Biennial in nature, the recognition focuses on those exhibitions that no one in the artistic world would have wanted to miss, "a prize for the present," Grandes emphasizes, and Dyangani Ose appreciates that what they dedicate themselves to, that is, organizing exhibitions, is celebrated.
Macba follows in the footsteps of the Prix Marcel Duchamp awarded by the Centre Pompidou or the Turner Prize of the Tate Modern, but with greater gratification, compared to the 25,000 euros of the Parisian prize and the 35,000 euros of the London one. It will exceed the 30,000 euros of the National Plastic Arts Award and will only be below the 100,000 euros of the Velázquez Award, both granted by the Ministry of Culture. The new award will not involve the purchase of works or the organization of any exhibition, compared to others.
La Sagrera, gender discourse and colonialisms
Aranberri, for whom the cameras he uses are instruments that protect him and help him to see, is not alone in this first edition. The award has also chosen three finalists, with 10,000 euros for each, who have been the collective Cabello/Carceller and artists Sandra Gamarra and Barcelona-native David Bestué, "from La Sagrera," as he is quick to point out. That's why Bestué was excited to exhibit at Fabra i Coats after its renovation with Ciudad de arena (City of Sand), where he reviewed the history of the city. In his studio, with the Tres Xemeneies (Three Chimneys) in the background, Bestué works on sculpture and the reuse of objects "from pleasure," without worrying too much about the meaning of what will come out and making unresolved issues fester.
The gender discourse is key to understanding Helena Cabello and Ana Carceller, who began working together more than 30 years ago and had their first solo exhibition in Barcelona, in addition to having more recently come from the hand of the Prats Nogueras Blanchard gallery. The award jury has highlighted their work "to expand the representativeness of identities hidden by the imposition of gender roles," as could be seen in the exhibition Una voz para Eurauso. Epílogo para un tiempo trans (A Voice for Eurauso. Epilogue for a Trans Time) at Azkuna Zentroa in Bilbao and La ocupación (The Occupation) at the Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid. The artistic collective, which lives and works in Madrid, uses photography, video, and performance to demonstrate that "another world is possible, other people are possible."
In contrast, with Sandra Gamarra, born in Lima and residing in Madrid, the matter is about decolonizing art. With her dog sneaking into her studio and having participated in some collective exhibitions at Macba, the artist seeks to create a more diverse and accessible representativeness, as she wanted to demonstrate in Pinacoteca migrante (Migrant Art Gallery), presented at the Spanish pavilion at the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale, always with the aim of "breaking comfort" and "creating doubts regarding the narrative and making it more human."