Visits

The Ha-ha is a deceptive mechanism that plays a role in the construction of the landscape. It generates an illusion of breadth and camouflages its real purpose: to control the movements of certain individuals or species. The name ‘ha-ha’ was used for the first time in the 1709 Dezallier d’Argenville book The Theory and Practice of Gardening, in which he explained that the name came from the exclamation of surprise from spectators when they recognised the optical illusion.

When I was asked to lead this tour, the first thing that came to mind was the title: Ha-ha Wall. It was almost an immediate association, perhaps induced by the huge contrast between this term and the immense work that presides over this show: 1,502 people facing the wall. It’s a laughable wall that is not remotely funny. It is a starting point, given that my and Santiago’s work have little in common at first glance. I have used the word ‘ha-ha’, which is a joke in itself, as a way of breaking the ice and beginning an unlikely dialogue between two generations, between two very different ways of approaching artistic production. Contrast again. And the contrast between light and shadow is what allows us to see… although not always. Shadows conceal or reveal, and looking directly at light can blind us. I want to approach this tour positioned from the paradoxes of looking, from the devices of visibility and concealment used to present facts, from the constant suspicion that in everything we are given to see, something remains hidden.

The CA2M Museum’s Education and Public Activities Department has a line of work aimed at developing thematic tours in which artists and creators are invited to discuss the exhibitions with spectators through the lens of their own practices. In this way, we avoid the presumed objectivity of the narratives that the exhibitions offer to instead break with hegemonic discourses. It is a space of inquiry which encourages each person to make their own interpretation of the image and the story in order to use them to generate new imaginaries.

Dates:

• Saturday 14 December 12 pm
• Sunday 15 December 6 pm

Ángela Cuadra inquires into images that discuss concealment techniques used throughout recent history in a broad phenomenological study of invisibility. Based on different sources with pre-existing historical and semantic meanings, she aims to find new layers of meaning in artistic expression. Grounded on collage and approached with intuition, her works are developed in multiple media, ranging installations to video, drawing and expanded painting.

She has held exhibitions at the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Today Museum (Beijing), Centro del Carmen (Valencia), Sant Andreu Contemporani (Barcelona), Fundación Cultural de Providencia (Providencia, Chile) and Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (CGAC) (Santiago de Compostela), among others. Since 2013, she has been working on the project space Salón, which she directs with her husband, Dai K S. She is also one of the founders of the first international fair of nonprofit spaces in Madrid, Supersimétrica.

Madrid has a long and little-known Islamic legacy which is intertwined with the city’s history in a way that challenges the political and media discourses that present Islam and Muslims as unwanted, recent foreign arrivals. Madrid was founded in the eleventh century with the mixed name of Maŷrit and is the only current European capital with Islamic roots.

Its first history was written in Arabic, as were the names of its first known inhabitants. For 220 years, Madrid belonged to the broad Arab-Islamic geographic and cultural space that extended from the Duero River to the Sahara Desert, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indus River. After being conquered and incorporated to the Kingdom of Castile in the late eleventh century, Madrid still had an Islamic presence for 500 more years through its Mudejar, Morisco and slave minorities.

This historical legacy is barely known because the history of Madrid has been recounted in light of its status as the urbs regia, the seat and symbolic embodiment of a power that has been presented as essential and exclusively Catholic and European, which has consequently tended to erase the material and symbolic traces of a past that was considered unsuitable. However, unexpected, subtle phantasmagorias of this past, both tangible and intangible, still exist in Madrid today and even inhabit the icons of Madrid’s identity.

This activity suggests a tour around different spaces of memory to engage in a reflection on the history and memory of Madrid in relation to concepts like identity, alterity, mestizaje and diversity.

Wednesday 19 June. 6-8 pm. Free activity with advance registration. Capacity: 25 people.

Daniel Gil-Benumeya, 1970. He was raised between Rabat and Madrid in a family associated with the imagined and cross-border geography of southern Spain. His academic training is in the field of Arab and Islamic Studies, and outside the academy he was trained in the neighbourhood community of Lavapiés and other areas of Madrid. He is currently a professor in the Department of Linguistics and Oriental Studies at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and scientific coordinator of the Centro de Estudios de Madrid Islámico (CEMI), which is affiliated with the Fundación de Cultura Islámica (FUNCI). His main line of research involves a range of issues associated with the past and present of Islam and populations considered Muslim in Europe. He specifically examines the processes of constructing identity and alterity and the role played by social representations of history and memory in this construction.

Asunción Molinos Gordo and Andrea Pacheco González invite us to accompany them on a special tour of Déjà Vécu, during which they will share some of the research they have done since 2018 which gave rise to this exhibition.

This encounter with the artist and the curator encourages participants to reflect on the traces of the past that still survive today and to question the official narratives about history, cultural hierarchies and the construction of collective identity on the Iberian Peninsula. What has already been lived and what reappears, a concept captured by the title, are the common thread both of the works and of this artist’s inquiry.

The tour will also address Molinos Gordo’s working methodologies and collaboration with other disciplines, such as microbiology, anthropology and the occult sciences. The diverse array of media found in her works—such as installations, drawing, glasswork and video—offer an opportunity to address Spain’s ‘unofficial’ stories through an experience that is both contemplative and critical. In her first solo exhibition in a public institution in Madrid, the artist and curator also examine the exchange with participants in order to assert these stories and their dialogue with the present time.

Dates: Tuesday 30 April 7 pm | Saturday 25 May 12 noon | Saturday 29 June 12 noon.

Capacity: 20 people.

Prior registration free of charge by phoning +34 91 276 02 21 or emailing ca2m@madrid.org
 

These months, the exhibitions will be filled with objects we may hover over, see from above or closer up. We suggest walking among them and under them, touching them and seeing what happens in that encounter.

We encourage you to engage in this collective experience, which is open to all types of groups, on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. Each tour will be different, and we’ll make them up as we go.

We may visit Déjà Vécu. What Has Already Been Lived, the exhibition by the artist Asunción Molinos Gordo, where we may wonder what mysteries the flint of Madrid harbours or what the social life inside the microcosm where human intestinal bacteria live is like.

On this collective tour, we may also wander around the different sculptures that Teresa Solar has proposed for the first floor, or go up to the third floor to discover what stories the artist Ana Gallardo has brought back on her journey from Argentina.

The programme is targeted at any type of group: clubs, organisations or school groups.

Register in advance at 912760227 or educacion.ca2m@madrid.org.

We are pleased to partner with Amecum on these tours, which suggest different ways to approach the works of these artists

We invite you to visit the exhibitions in company on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings. One example is Déjà Vécu, the work by the artist Asunción Molinos Gordo, where you may wonder what mysteries the flint of Madrid harbours or what the social life inside the microcosm where human intestinal bacteria live is like.

You can also learn about the different sculptures that Teresa Solar has proposed for the first floor, or go up to the third floor to discover what stories the artist Ana Gallardo has brought back on her journey from Argentina.

Saturdays at 6:30 pm and Sundays at 12:30 pm. Register in advance by phoning 912760221, emailing ca2m@madrid.org or at the museum’s reception.

We are pleased to partner with Amecum on these tours, which suggest different ways to approach the works of these artists.