Expaña 365

Isaías Griñolo

Expaña 365 is a work by Isaías Griñolo (Bonares, Huelva, 1963) that is part of historia_contemporánea (contemporary_history), a poetic and documentary frieze that began in 2011 under the wing of civil resistance processes in countries throughout the world, constructing stories “with the discomfort of bodies as modern dances of death of neoliberalism”, as the artist puts it.

The exhibition is based on the concept of a diary as an accumulation and container of memories. Structured around four interventions, the first, entitled Fandango (caballo) (Fandango [Horse], 2025), is a collage that combines, among other things, sporting and warlike exaltations of Spanishness, the dictator Francisco Franco and Vox leader Santiago Abascal on horseback, as well as documents recording acts of vandalism committed against Muslim establishments in El Ejido (2000) and Torre Pacheco (2025), all of them within the silhouette of the wounded horse from Guernica (1937).

The second intervention, Sopla (Dios es fascista) (Blow [God is a Fascist], 2025), is another collage that uses as main image a photo-epigram by Bertolt Brecht that was included in his book War Primer (1955). Although the authorship and publication medium are unspecified, the image used by Brecht and included by Griñolo was the work of the photographer known as “Kautela”, depicting the mass held by one of Franco’s generals, Juan Yagüe, in Plaça de Catalunya on 27 January 1939, the day after the Nationalists took control of Barcelona.

Next to the page from War Primer is a drawing by Isaías Griñolo that uses a reproduction of Goya’s etching entitled Sopla, which is included in his Caprichos series (1797-1799). There is also a video that associates the NODO news report on the return of the Christ of Lepanto to Barcelona Cathedral on 16 July 1939 with a report from La Vanguardia on 3 May 2023 about the restoration of this sculpture, in which can be read such racist captions as “El Santo Cristo de Lepanto deja de ser negro. Lo que cubría la piel clara de la figura era en realidad suciedad” (The Holy Christ of Lepanto is no longer black. What covered the figure’s light skin was actually grime), or absolutely reactionary statements such as those of the Dean of Barcelona Cathedral, Santiago Bueno, when he declared: “Es que aquel negro era porquería” (That black stuff was filth). The two most venerated religious sculptures in Catalonia are paradoxically both black: the Christ of Lepanto and the Virgin of Montserrat, popularly known as “La Moreneta” (The Little Black Lady).

After Ya tienen asiento (They already have a seat, 2025), a small installation that combines flamenco records, magazines and books from the period, there are two audiovisual pieces, 1.500 kilos (2023- 2025) and Cuaderno de trabajo no. 11. Siete días (Seven days) (2025), the latter unpublished. Both pieces are paradigmatic examples of Griñolo’s film work, which draws on such diverse sources as the experimental films made using the cut-up technique by Antony Balch, William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin in the 1960s; Alexander Kluge’s TV programmes, and the Chris Marker’s subjective documentaries.

The credits are essential as they not only indicate the origin of each audiovisual fragment and are often accompanied by subversive songs, but also constitute a kind of epilogue, almost an independent piece—as occurs in certain films by Jean-Luc Godard— within the film narrative.