• Antònia del Río, Tenir el castell al cap, dur el castell al cos III [Having the Castle in Mind, Carrying the Castle in Your Body III], 2020-2022. Acrylic and graphite on canvas, 81x100 cm. Courtesy of the artist. © of the work of art, Antònia del Río, 2022
  • View of the exhibition “Having the Castle in Mind, Carrying the Castle in your Body” © Es Baluard Museu, 2022. Photograph: David Bonet
  • View of the exhibition “Having the Castle in Mind, Carrying the Castle in your Body” © Es Baluard Museu, 2022. Photograph: David Bonet
  • View of the exhibition “Having the Castle in Mind, Carrying the Castle in your Body” © Es Baluard Museu, 2022. Photograph: David Bonet
  • View of the exhibition “Having the Castle in Mind, Carrying the Castle in your Body” © Es Baluard Museu, 2022. Photograph: David Bonet
  • View of the exhibition “Having the Castle in Mind, Carrying the Castle in your Body” © Es Baluard Museu, 2022. Photograph: David Bonet
Antònia del Río, Tenir el castell al cap, dur el castell al cos III [Having the Castle in Mind, Carrying the Castle in Your Body III], 2020-2022. Acrylic and graphite on canvas, 81x100 cm. Courtesy of the artist. © of the work of art, Antònia del Río, 2022

Antònia del Río.
Having the Castle in Mind, Carrying the Castle in Your Body

Location: Exhibition Hall D

“Having the Castle in Mind, Carrying the Castle in Your Body” is a project by Antònia del Río to reflect on the social construction of the landscape.

In reality we only see the landscapes we want to see. This means the ones that do not question our socially-constructed idea, the product of a certain way of perceiving and appropriating the geographical space. Landscape reflects a particular way of organising and experiencing a place within the framework of a set of complex, changing relationships. These may be of gender or class, to give just a couple of examples, and are certainly determined by power-related issues. Landscape as the result of a collective transformation of nature is a social and cultural product.

While we accept the contradiction, we know that sometimes we are unaware of what we have closest to us. The artist, who lives and works in Barcelona, was born in Capdepera (Mallorca). She has never been up to Alaró castle, which stands atop a mountain on the island. As the result of a stay in the village at the foot of the mountain, Antònia asks the inhabitants of Alaró what the fortification is like and what its surroundings are like, and about the path climbing up to the castle. How her neighbours describe it, what images it generates and what common places exist to imagine it and set about a personal reconstruction.

The body and movement are physically and symbolically present in these descriptions, which reinforce and recall knowledge about the place, forming a kind of active corporal memory in which physical, political and digital territory converge. The castle determines a body language and therefore has a performative side that plays a significant role in this exhibition.

Passing on knowledge, but also the memory of a specific place has a lot to do with the creation of the mental imagery of that place. Myths, legends, traditions and representations of Alaró castle are part of the lives of local residents, and Antònia del Río recreates these through their testimony, together with the symbolism of the mountain and its peak.

Through a multi-disciplinary body of work including drawings and paintings, video, postcards and sound passages, the artist conceptualises an approach to an unknown place on the basis of narrative, experience and participation.

Antònia del Río (Capdepera, Mallorca,1983) was trained in Fine Arts in Barcelona and is currently preparing a doctorate in Advanced Studies of Artistic Productions. Her projects, which range from traditional and expanded drawing to digital and interactive tools, photography, publishing and artist’s books, focus on exploring mechanisms for the transmission and loss of knowledge, establishing an inevitable dialogue between memory and forgetting. She has pursued this topic by centring her interest on different questions such as traces, absence, individual and collective memory, permanence and disappearance in history, and repositories of memory, like libraries and archives. Her work has been exhibited at the Centre d’Arts Santa Mònica and the Fundació Suñol, both in Barcelona, La Casa Encendida in Madrid and the Centre d’Art Tecla Sala in L’Hospitalet, among others.

Alongside her artistic work, Antònia del Río plays an active role in teaching art: she lectures at the University of Barcelona and is a member of the team at the Experimentem amb l’ART space for contemporary education and creativity.

Share
Categories
Temporary
Tags
-
28th October 2022 → 29th January 2023
Curator: Pilar Rubí

With the collaboration of:

Downloads:
Activities:
Members of Es Baluard
Exclusive visit with Antònia del Río and Pilar Rubí
October 27th, 6 pm
Requirement: being Member of Es Baluard