The exhibition "Spells and Dissidences", which is open until 30 December at the LGBTI Center, brings a new queer meaning to various spiritual traditions
This isn’t just any exhibition. Anyone walking through the LGBTI Center’s doors and looking at the exhibits behind the glass will see not just works of art but also mirrors reflecting an often hidden part of each person: their spirituality.
“This exhibition is like a map travelling along different ways of experiencing spirituality for people who feel different. Its aim is to express how all our ties, journeys and experiences are affected by spirituality and how we have reformulated these experiences, taking back the parts we are interested in and leaving behind those that were hurting us,” explains Xeito Fole, a member of the team in charge of the LGBTI Center’s programming and, together with Julia Pardo, curator of the exhibition.
The works in the exhibition thus invite visitors to travel through a great variety of territories and traditions including, among others, those of Mexico, Chile, the Pyrenees, Argentina and Andalusia. “These territories are affected by colonial thinking and socio-cultural and economic extractivism, and we believe that cultural institutions should open up spaces where they are represented and cause cracks that, although potentially uncomfortable, are certainly necessary,” explains Julia Pardo, who is also a curator of the exhibition and a member of the Centre’s programming team.
The exhibition includes, for example, three works by the group of artists Las Migras de Abya Yala, composed of women who have migrated from Latin America to Barcelona, which have been taken from a previous exhibition held at the Ca La Dona feminist space in 2021. “We wanted to find other ways to “feel-think” about our relationship with the cosmos, to give memory a new meaning and highlight the ancestral nature of our female ancestors, who were victims of genocide,” explains group member Lorena Álvarez.
Native Chilean plants, such as Magellan barberry, native animals such as the condor, and depictions of indigenous people who have been forcefully uprooted are the central topics of Paula Tikay’s work in the exhibition. Alongside her, Mexican artist Victoria Villasana pays tribute to a female shaman as a symbol for all wise women with traditional medicine knowledge.
Along the same lines, the work produced by Daniela Benítez and Daniela Efímera is based on an extremely personal process in which the two artists, migrants who settled in Barcelona years ago, had to go back to their countries of origin to visit their families. “The work is about breaking some of our ties with our ancestors, such as those of guilt, which have a very significant presence in our countries due to the imposition of Catholicism. We also wanted to show our identity: we are neither black nor white: we are brown, because we descend from indigenous people. This is why we have used images of our mothers and grandmothers, linked on a loom to photos of ourselves as children and of other women like us in Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Argentina or Mexico,” she explains.
The Barcelona-based Mexican artist Rapha Hu, for his part, explains that his illustrations in the exhibition combine elements of European witchcraft traditions, such as the ritual of flying with plants such as stramonium or belladonna, with more pop-like elements, such as popular children’s toys from the 1990s.
In the case of the writer and artist from the Canary Islands Roberta Marrero, the images are suggestive of a universe in which Catholic imagery, classic Hollywood stars, occult traditions such as palm reading, or the homoerotic world of Tom of Finland’s drawings exist side by side with each other.
Activism-based art
The exhibition aims to bring these works of art together not just for their aesthetic value but also in order to provide a space in which to air the demands of the feminist and LGBTI groups.
The exhibition thus includes two works from the 1st edition of the Jornades Estatals Autogestionades sobre Bisexualitat [Self-managed State Conference on Bisexuality], which was held around 23 September 2022 within the framework of Bi Visibility Day.
The first of these is a spell recited at the end of an astrology workshop in that conference and presented as “a powerful self-knowledge tool that opposes the supremacy of the ruling classes and has been much reviled by class-conscious capitalism,” recalls Yaiza, a participant at the Conference. “23 September is not just Bi Visibility Day: it is also the autumn equinox (in the northern hemisphere), and we felt that the spell was a good way to bring together the anger of the demonstrations we attend together with the joy and celebratory mood of the communities we form with our friends,” she adds.
The Conference also included a workshop on bisexual historical memory, which finished with an analogue collage activity whose result is now another exhibit under the “Encanteris i dissidències” [“Spells and Dissidences”] heading. “In this work I have drawn parallels between the image of witches – part of a history that has been denied and ignored – and my experience as a bisexual person who came out quite late, unfortunately a very common experience for bi people,” explains Bobadilla-born artist Letícia P.F.
Another piece of activist art is Santo Coño Insumiso, which is on show at the Center accompanied by chants inspired on the feminist demonstrations in which this work was included in a religious procession: on 8 March 2013 in Malaga, and on 1 May 2014 in Seville.
The activists who took part in these demonstrations were reported by a group of Christian lawyers linked to far-right political parties, who accused them of alleged hate crimes against religious sentiments, explains Manuela, a Barcelona-based feminist activist from Andalusia.
While the Seville activists were acquitted, the criminal procedure against the Malaga feminists is still in progress, and an appeal to the Spanish Constitutional Court has been filed. In 2019, a group of Andalusian feminists living in Barcelona created the Santo Coño Insumiso sculpture and marched with it in a religious procession in support of their fellow activists who were being prosecuted.
“Santo Coño Insumiso is a form of cultural re-appropriation of the Judeo-Christian heritage of Andalusia’s feminists and the Moorish-based traditions that have led to the current Holy Week celebrations,” explains Maria, another member of the group.
“Spells and Dissidences” finishes with an illustration by Natalia Saldaña depicting a plant native to the Pyrenees that is said to have magical-medicinal properties, and the work “Angel Negro” by intersex activist Mer Gòmez, created within the framework of the “Mirades insubmises” [“Defiant looks”] activity held at the National Art Museum of Catalonia.
The exhibition, which is part of the “Espiritualitats” [“Spiritualities”] series, will be open until 30 December during the LGBTI Center’s opening hours: Monday from 3.30 pm to 8.30 pm; Tuesday to Friday from 10 am to 2 pm, and from 3.30 pm to 8.30 pm; and Saturday from 10 am to 2 pm, and from 3 pm to 8 pm.