Barcelona and 11 neighboring cities will host next year Manifesta, a nomadic European biennial of contemporary art. A complex and long title that is more easily understood when one sees the venues it has chosen for its next edition, going beyond the Catalan capital and giving cultural dimension to its metropolitan region. One of them will be Casa Gomis, a rationalist work largely unknown to the local public. It is located in front of La Ricarda, a natural space mistreated and in danger if the airport expansion goes ahead. "Manifesta operates in the critical realm, to shake us up; it is not simply a celebratory and aesthetic biennial, but rather it puts its finger on the wound. It highlights the contradictions that run through the world and proposes possibilities for art to help find possible futures," explains the Secretary of State for Culture and former Deputy Mayor of Barcelona, Jordi Martí.
Casa Gomis, also known as La Ricarda, will be the nerve center of one of the three thematic pillars of the next edition of Manifesta. The work of architect Antoni Bonet Castellana will serve to debate conflicts now more relevant than ever, such as the one between rampant economic growth and a defense of degrowth to protect a dying environment. With the murmur of birds inhabiting La Ricarda and the noise of planes landing at El Prat in the background, the biennial will open its doors to host interventions, exhibitions, and projects by both local and international artists. A whole declaration of intentions that will be accompanied by neighboring cities on the other side of the Llobregat river, Cornellà and L'Hospitalet, with an old factory like Can Trinxet also filling with art after years awaiting its restoration.
If conflicts are to serve to imagine what is to come, Manifesta 2024 will continue its path and head towards the other river that delimits the Catalan capital, the Besòs, locating itself in the Tres Xemeneies, an old thermal power plant disused since 2011 that now envisions a new future plan, although it also does not convince some residents who demand more green spaces. The contemporary art biennial will allow visitors to the old turbine hall, replacing its historical activity with artistic interventions. Sant Adrià will go hand in hand with Santa Coloma de Gramenet, who will highlight the recovery of the Besòs after having been used as a landfill for decades with initiatives such as the BesArt urban art museum. It will also stop in Mataró, in its old prison converted since early 2022 into the Mataró Art Contemporani, leaving behind its repressive past during the dictatorship.
After following the course of the two rivers that define Barcelona, the art festival encounters Collserola, passing over it and continuing to Sant Cugat del Vallès, Sabadell, Terrassa, and Granollers. With care as an umbrella, Manifesta will be located in spaces such as the Monastery of Sant Cugat and the Roca Umbert Factory in Granollers to reflect and open debates through different imaginative proposals. "We believe that there is a heritage of humanity that must be protected, and that is tenderness. Wherever there is art and culture, there will always be the possibility of tenderness," says actress and Terrassa Culture Councilor, Rosa Boladeras.
All of this, reaching an area of more than 3,000 square kilometers and five million inhabitants, making the future edition of the nomadic biennial the most ambitious since it was created in 1990. "It's going to be huge," says its director, Hedwig Fijen. For twelve weeks, from September 8 to November 24, 2024, the different spaces that will host the cultural event expect to receive more than one million visits, the vast majority local, representing 70% of the total in previous editions. In addition, 90% of the team behind it is local. That is why, although it coincides with the end of the summer tourist season and another major international event such as the America's Cup, the organizers are not worried about adding more saturation to the city. "Manifesta is radically local. It is the region that sets the program and it is through it that we look outwards, through Granollers or Sant Adrià," Fijen remarks. Before passing through Barcelona, Manifesta's venues have been Rotterdam (1996), Luxembourg (1998), Ljubljana (2000), Frankfurt (2002), San Sebastián (2004), South Tyrol (2008), Murcia (2010), Genk (2012), Saint Petersburg (2014), Zurich (2016), Palermo (2018), Marseille (2020) and Pristina (2022). "It's the third time we've been in Spain, this shows how relevant it is," Fijen emphasizes.
"It is very important that Barcelona was chosen and that it was done at this time. There will be a leap in the 15th edition compared to what has been done so far. Today Manifesta is one of the most important biennials in the world of contemporary art, it is not the largest or the one that attracts the most public or has the highest budget, but in culture not everything is measured by quantitative indicators, but also by its capacity for impact and to reinvent itself. We proposed a cooperative project with 12 cities, which means talking to a lot of people and forces us to think about a way of working that also has to be for the future. It is a great opportunity," adds Martí. A varied urban map that both the different administrations involved and the organizers of the biennial want to serve so that residents go from one city to another to visit spaces, opting to decentralize cultural prominence and weaving new relationships in a nearby environment often unknown.