Activity

Led by: Pastora Filigrana

With the participation of: Pedro G. Romero, Teatro del Barrio, Silvia Agüero, Tania Pardo, Sandra Carmona, Alba Hernández, Noelia Cortés, Cristina Trinidad Reyerta, Isaki Lacuesta, Paloma Zapata, Pablo Vega, Daniel Baker, Malgarzota Mirga-Tas and Inés Plasencia.

The Image Study Workshops are devoted to collectively reflecting on the theory, practice and semantic openings and contemporary demarcations of visual cultures. They are organised as debate forums, seminar and lectures accompanied by different artistic proposals.

These workshops aim to reflect on the image given throughout art history of the Roma, from the stereotypical image of the Romani woman and its appearance in visual culture to the Romani man represented as the heir of the Lorca’s reconstruction.

With this activity, we pause to think about the social importance of Romani visual culture and the analysis of these interpretations that bring us closer to the reality of the Roma in the twenty-first century. Different knowing and expert voices on the topic suggest a defolklorisation that is capable of breaking taboos and bringing us closer to a new way into the meanings inherent in Romani culture. This new understanding of Romani visuality offers a new picture of the social relations surrounding this people like nomadism, singing, marginality and folklore, all of which are so closely associated with this community.

PROGRAMME

THURSDAY 21 NOVEMBER

• 5–5:15 pm Workshop Presentation. Tania Pardo, director of the CA2M Museum, and Estrella Serrano, head of the Education and Public Activities Department at the CA2M Museum.
• 5:15–6 pm Opening lecture: Counter-Images of the Roma. Pastora Filigrana.
• 6–7:15 pm Lecture: Defolklorising Flamenco, that is, the Roma. Pedro G. Romero. Colloquium with the audience.
• 7:15–7:45 pm Break.
• 7:45–8:45 pm Dramatised monologue: I’m Not Your Romani Woman, Silvia Agüero and Teatro del Barrio.

During the course of the workshops, you can track the process of Cristina Trinidad Reyerta making her artistic installation in the Museum’s foyer.

FRIDAY 22 NOVEMBER

• 11 am–12:15 pm Lecture: Living Romani: Between Artistic Bohemia and La Libertá. Tania Pardo. Colloquium with the audience.
• 12:15–12:30 pm Break.
• 12:30–2 pm Round table: Images of the Roma from Romani Women Creators. Sandra Carmona (illustrator and editor). Alba Hernández (Romanja Feminist Library). Noelia Cortés (writer). Moderator: Pastora Filigrana. Colloquium with the audience.
• 2:30–4 pm Break for lunch.
• 4–5:15 pm Round table: De-folklorising the Roma in the Cinema. Isaki Lacuesta (film director), Paloma Zapata (film director) and Pablo Vega (film director).
• 5:15–7:45 pm Screening: La Leyenda del Tiempo [The Legend of Time]. (Film by Isaki Lacuesta), Malegro Verte [Glad to See You] (Short film by Nüll García), Proud Roma (Short film by Pablo Vega).
• 7:45–8:30 pm - Colloquium with the audience.

SATURDAY 23 NOVEMBER

• 11 am–12 pm Lecture: Changing Visions: Gypsy Visuality and the Romani Aesthetic. Daniel Baker.
• 12–1 pm Lecture Dr Anna Mirga-Kruszelnicka, deputy director of the European Roma Art and Culture Institute (ERIAC).
• 1:30–2 pm Conversation with Daniel Baker and Dr Anna Mirga-Kruszelnicka. Moderator: Inés Plasencia.
• 2–2:30 pm Closure of the workshop and presentation of the artistic installation Breaking the Folklore by Cristina Trinidad Reyerta in the Museum’s foyer.

Alexis Callado, the curator of the Santiago Sierra exhibition 1502 Persons Facing the Wall, invites us to accompany him on a tour focused on works that question representation and power, in which the curator will share the origin of the project and its different phases.

The artist’s first solo show in Madrid, it revolves around one of his hallmark resources: portraits of people with their backs facing us, where the subject’s identity is nullified, stripping them of their individuality. Through this approach, Sierra invites spectators to reflect on issues like immigration, exploitation, exclusion and war.

On the tour of the show, participants will reflect on the dynamics of control in art and contemporary society and explore how Sierra connects his work with minimalism, conceptual art and performance from the 1960s and 1970s, using these languages to reveal the power structures permeating the contemporary world.

The tour will also address the contrast between the Western vision of representation, focused on identity and visibility, and the Eastern perspective, which values absence and neutrality as spaces for new interpretations. Through this guided tour, visitors will be able to analyse how Sierra’s black-and-white images and videos reveal raw realities that challenge the public and generate profound awareness of the power dynamics that operate in art and in the world.

Dates:

Saturday 19 October 12 noon

Saturday 14 December at 12 noon

Register in advance by phoning 91 276 02 21 or emailing ca2m@madrid.org 

We are suggesting a group tour through the museum’s exhibitions to discover what happens in each encounter. It is a collective experience open to all types of groups on Tuesday’ and Wednesday mornings. Every tour will be different, and we’ll design it as we go, generating unexpected dialogues.

We’ll explore two exhibitions on our tour. The first is Busy Looking for Soursops, the show by the Venezuelan artist Sol Calero, who invites us to immerse ourselves in her colourful world. Her work revolves around the concept of movement and the fact of being born in one place and inhabiting another.

Migrating and being a migrant is a condition that connects us with the 1502 Persons Facing the Wall, the exhibition by Santiago Sierra, who is known for his critical eye. His work is immersed in the social reality and conditions of production and reception, and he confronts us with what often remains hidden and silenced. The ‘radicality’ of his works challenges spectators to reflect and debate.

Targeted at groups, associations and organisations.

Free of charge. Register in advance by phoning 91 276 02 27 or emailing educacion.ca2m@madrid.org.

On 1 October we will present the publication Ciudad Sur. Costa Marrón. Un recorrido del ladrillo al gresite en la construcción del tiempo libre [Southern City. Brown Coast: A Journey from Brick to Stoneware in Leisure Construction] at the CA2M Museum, the outcome of the programme by the same name which was held with the artist Irene de Andrés and La Liminal collective over the course of eight sessions between October 2023 and May 2024.

This space of shared experimentation has proposed an approach to Móstoles as post-tourist guides to travel through a series of architectures made up of layers of time, experiences and lived moments around what we call leisure, based on topics like tourism, the idea of the hero, public space, the centre-periphery binomial, neighbourhood struggles, speculation, displacements, gentrification and urban planning programmes (PAUs). 

Like an archive, the reporting by Blanca Sotos contains the multiple voices of those who participated in its third edition. The compilation of different materials—texts, poems, stories, transcribed conversations, key terms and concepts and maps of the walks—aims to reflect the sessions in which the participants visited swimming pools and sports centres, shopping centres and (anti-)shopping centres, cultural spaces, public parks and the town’s famous bullring.

This space will also serve to kick off this year’s edition, which begins in late October.