Part of Sowing Archives, conceived and curated by Sara Alberani and Chiara Siravo (LOCALES) 

On 15 October at 7 p.m., Italian-Libyan artist Adelita Husni Bey will present her most recent and ongoing research into the implementation of water-controlling infrastructures in the contexts of colonialism and its contemporary capitalist legacy in Libya. Based on archival research, oral history and the development of a participatory pedagogical approach rooted in political theatre, Husni Bey will introduce this work in the context of her wider practice. The evening will involve a screening as well as a conversation with local voices exploring similar connections to hydraulic infrastructures in Barcelona and its surrounding territories, especially in relation to the severe ongoing climate crisis which is manifesting its most visible effects through water.  

The Italian Cultural Institute of Barcelona presents the second edition of IT Out OFF, a program conceived by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the Directorate General for Public and Cultural Diplomacy of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, for the internationalization of Italian art.

The 2024 edition features Sowing Archives, a public program conceived and curated by Sara Alberani and Chiara Siravo of the Rome based collective LOCALES, is presented at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, a contemporary art space run by the Barcelona City Council. The title of the programme refers to the importance of the archive as a visual, imaginative and knowledge-building medium within marginalized and invisibilized contexts. The project is based on the belief that artistic practices have the capacity to locate and gather traces of the past and plant the necessary seeds for the recognition of histories and experiences whose memory is at risk of being lost. Just as there are potential histories, there are also potential archives that can take root through the sowing and irrigation of their subterranean substances, which often only appear to be hidden. 

Through the work of the international artists involved in the program, Adelita Husni Bey, Muna Mussie and Daniela Ortiz, Sowing Archives recognizes and celebrates the importance of counter-narratives, particularly in the context of Europe’s colonial past. The project initiates a dialogue between Italy and Spain, where multiple artistic practices are searching for and bringing to light a critical perspective towards the persistent aesthetic and ideological reverberations of colonialism, also through alternative pedagogy geared towards reformulating collective memory.

Composed of performances, video projections, workshops and a series of editorial releases, Sowing Archives consists of three main events hosted by La Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona from 1 October to the end of November 2024.

Sowing Archives is a public programme conceived and curated by Sara Alberani and Chiara Siravo (LOCALES) and promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture and by the Italian Cultural Institute of Barcelona in conjunction with the 15th edition of Manifesta. 

The project is supported by La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, àngels Barcelona, Laveronica Arte Contemporanea, and with the collaboration of Calafou and Nero Editions.

LOCALES is a curatorial platform founded in Rome that aims to inspire a reflection on the public sphere through artistic practices. It is directed and curated by Sara Alberani, Marta Federici and Chiara Siravo. Through a series of site-specific programmes involving commissions of new artworks, explorations of public spaces, educational activities and performances, LOCALES addresses the complexity of contemporary urgencies starting from the political and social history of symbolic places in the city and their local communities. 

The LOCALES team that is active in the Sowing Archives project is composed of Sara Alberani, Chiara Siravo (curators), Chiara Pagano (curator of narratives), Giulia Caruso (project manager) and Alice Albanese Ginammi (intern).

Adelita Husni Bey is an artist and expert in pedagogy who is interested in topics ranging from anarcho-collectivism to theatre, from jurisprudence to urban development studies. She is also involved in organizing workshops, producing publications and curating radio broadcasts, archives and exhibitions that use non-competitive pedagogical models through the framework of contemporary art. She has participated in Work it Out!, Aalborg Museum, 2021; Trainings for the Not Yet, BAK, Utrecht, 2020; Being: New Photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2018; Dreamlands, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2016; and The Eighth Climate, 11th Gwangju Biennial, 2015. From 2020 to 2022 she was a fellow at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, where she developed These Conditions, 2022 at Brooklyn Army Terminal, New York, a hybrid space combining an exhibition venue, a film set and a pedagogical space.