Fictions: Narrativity in Contemporary Art
From November 29, 2024 to April 20, 2025
Curator: Ferran Barenblit
Artists: Ignasi Aballí, Isa Carrillo, Mariana Castillo Deball, Consonni, Gonzalo Elvira, Dora García, Verónica Gerber Bicecci, Andy Medina, Jorge Méndez Blake, Mabel Palacín, Alan Sierra, Irene Solá, Teresa Solar Abboud, Los Torreznos.
Sala Juan Soriano and Sala de proyectos del MAZ
Fictions: Narrativity in Contemporary Art explores ways in which the analysis, interpretation, and construction of narratives have come to play a central role in contemporary art. The starting point of the exhibition is the rich and passionate interrelationship between literature and the visual arts, not only as a source of inspiration, but also as a continuous dialogue in which complex alternative realities are plotted out. Within the context of an age of transformation, following the end of the hegemonic chronicles that shaped Western culture from the advent of modernity (and their counterpoints in post-modernity), the opportunity emerges for different and varied voices, improbable stories, and all manner of tales without a moral attached.
Each of the works in the exhibition is a gamble on producing subjectivities, on translating individual and collective experiences into narratives that, by being interpreted, reveal how their discourse has been constructed. All that is inevitably lost or gained in the process of interpretation ―including, in some cases, extraordinary subtle elements― serves to enrich meaning, adding layers that reconfigure our perception of reality through images, texts, or performative actions. Within this framework, narrativity becomes a principle for the articulation of meaning that, far from offering universal truths, constructs multiple diverse and fragmented views.
The exhibition also addresses the influence of narrativity in our age of information overkill, where narratives have replaced ideologies as articulating axes. In this age of post-truth, we face the risk that the insistent repetition of falsehoods may generate the appearance of verisimilar constructions, with political consequences that are difficult to foresee but clearly undesirable. The works gathered here propose a narrative grammar that questions cultural, political, and social realities, inviting us to reflect on the power of stories in a world where meanings themselves are being constantly renegotiated.
Ferran Barenblit
