Barcelona Metropolis

Barcelona’s vibrant art scene is experiencing a time of new opportunities. The circuit of public amenities dedicated to promoting art has widened and has been given renewed impetus with generational changes in management. Santa Mònica, under the auspices of the Government of Catalonia’s Department of Culture, and Fabra i Coats: Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona [Fabra i Coats: Barcelona Contemporary Art Centre], La Virreina Centre de la Imatge [La Virreina Image Centre] and La Capella, all three municipal art venues, share many things: an idea of art as an arena for critical debate on reality and as a tool for social transformation and approaches to dealing with a plural and complex scene that has been neglected for many years.

The road to get here has been rough. The dismantling of Santa Mònica in 2007, on the brink of the global financial crisis, left Catalonia’s visual arts ecosystem in very critical condition. Mid-career artists were the main victims of that drastic political decision: they were suddenly left exposed, and for many of them the only option was to venture abroad. The sector’s protests did not prevent the art centre’s vacuum from lasting for more than a decade, an unprecedented event in the world’s big and not so big cities, and all the pressure fell on the smaller venues dedicated to emerging art. “The system was sustained on this precarious basis, which was stuck in a dead end loop for too long”, Joana Hurtado (Barcelona, 1979) tells us, who ran one of these venues, Can Felipa, until winning the public tender to direct the Fabra i Coats: Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona in 2019.

The opening of the Barcelona kunsthalle in the old factory in the Sant Andreu neighbourhood reinstated the purpose that Santa Mònica had fulfilled since the 1980s. And in a new framework: forging connections with social, educational and cultural entities and the factory for creation also housed in this heritage complex that will soon begin the final stages of its transformation. Rather than generations or ages, Hurtado prefers to talk about trajectories and visibility. “We have a responsibility to explain who these names are who already have a career and have not yet received public recognition, whether artists or curators, mid-career or not,” she points out.

The sector has never tired of demanding the reinstatement of Santa Mònica, which in recent years has been a hotchpotch of cultural proposals with no directive. Finally, in early 2021, Enric Puig Punyet (Mataró, 1980) was appointed, also through a public tender, to lead the art centre’s new stage. Puig Punyet, who comes from the factory for creation La Escocesa, is testing an innovative and experimental institution model, with virtually no equivalent anywhere, which makes it more difficult to define. Santa Mònica, which was inaugurated for La Mercè [the city of Barcelona’s annual festival], aspires to be a platform to promote mid-career artists with an approach that focuses on open and unpredictable creative processes. “Our commitment is to community work and mutual learning, connecting different disciplines, sectors, not just related to art, territories and generations. Artists should not only be given one more exhibition for their curriculum, but subsequent channels to grow professionally”, explains Puig Punyet, who works with a flexible programming concept. “We have to look outwards and also let ourselves be looked at, in order to have a capacity to respond to reality.”

The local scene, at the forefront

The rich community of Barcelonan and Catalan artists is the big capital of these spaces, which have ripped up old labels of prejudice towards the local. “Listening and dialogue with our entourage are essential for dealing with the emergencies we are up against, now exacerbated by the pandemic. I don’t agree that working with a local programme is provincialism. Santa Mònica shall place the emphasis here, and that doesn’t mean closing itself off at all”, Enric Puig Punyet believes.

At La Capella, the dilemma doesn’t exist either. Its purpose is to assist its own artistic fabric, specifically emerging artists. David Armengol (Barcelona, 1974) has recently taken over from Oriol Gual and is loyal to the programme that forms the backbone of all its contents: the Barcelona Producció call for tenders, which, since its creation in 2006, has been changing to adapt to the needs and desires of artists and other art agents. One of its distinguishing features is the support lent to creators at the outset of their careers before, during and after the inauguration of their artwork, selected by a jury that tutors them. “We place care at the heart of everything. The challenge now is to broaden the initiative”, Armengol points out, who in the management competition presented a plan to give La Capella the status of a fully-fledged art centre, with new parallel programmes that shall progressively be generated and grow “organically”.

Fabra i Coats: Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona seeks balance, which is why it shares some of the game cards with international proposals. “This dual perspective is important because it feeds back into itself,” underlines Joana Hurtado. And La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, run by Valentín Roma (Ripollet, 1970), has also found a coherent fit with the city that makes it one of the benchmark artistic facilities in Barcelona. In 2020, the colonial building on La Rambla celebrated 40 years of commitment to disseminating art. It is the leading public institution. At the end of the first decade of the new millennium, it adopted the name of Centre de la Imatge. Roma landed there four years ago with his project, chosen by public tender, and in 2021 began a second term, after winning another competition. Research runs through the heart of the programme, which addresses the subject of image in an amplified scope. Photography has a consistent presence, but it intertwines with lots of other media. As for the authors, the venue features historical figures or movements with no museographic narrative or relationship with the present to current artists who are often also discoveries. In this second phase, he wants to interact more with the local context and at the same time push international exhibitions up a notch. “They are not conflicting actions.”

Interconnecting

The next step is greater coordination between the centres at different levels, local and national. “We need to move from a more individual model to a network that shows that we are a combination of interdependent voices,” as David Armengol sees it. “Conversations must be constant as to the role of each institution in relation to the others,” claims Puig Punyet. Hurtado asserts that, “We must be able to ensure the stability and visibility of a solid institution, far from political clashes, while still being porous; that is to say, on the one hand, spokespeople, in the sense of opening channels of communication, and, on the other, mediators, integrated in a network who help build bridges between emerging and established artists.”

Roma also sees a clear prospect for cooperation. “Obviously we all have our own distinctive features, but it is more what unites us. We’re wrong if we see ourselves as part of a pie, because it doesn’t exist. Barcelona is a small city and the audiences and realms of art are associated.” For the director of La Virreina, the vision of the art scene in the 1990s marked by hierarchies between the facilities, classified by size and theme, is out-dated. “Now is the time for small and medium-sized venues. We are not governed by labels, what drives us is doing projects well”.