Lila
Barcelona, Spain
March 29 of 2024
10 x 10 x 9 m
“When we were invited to exhibit at MACBA, we thought of having an open and massive party: inviting artists, friends and family to occupy the institution, celebrate the meeting, claim the space and reclaim its social function. Then we thought that maybe not many people would come and we decided to make a poem, a flower “
The artist Lydia Ourahmane exhibits at MACBA (Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona). In an exercise of experimental curatorship and institutional criticism, she proposes the 108 Days project, in which she chooses and invites 108 artists, from the social landscape of Barcelona, to exhibit, for one day, in the Museum Tower.
In this context, Penique productions is invited to make an intervention and presents Lila: an inflatable and ephemeral installation that completely occupies the organic space of the MACBA Tower. A lilac globe that, as usual, gets related to the architecture and the place in which it is in. In this case, a particularly important place in the artistic and social structure of Barcelona city. A Museum that is a symbol of power and imposition, although full of contradictions and open to conflict. An institution that artists aspire to reach, as a recognition, as a prize, but that at the same time represents the structure of an obsolete cultural model: elitist and self-referential, far from social, local and present reality.
It is in this sense, pointing to this contradiction, that the work, its color, the text that accompanies it and Lydia’s gesture can be read.
