Manuela Pedrón Nicolau

Curator Manuela Pedrón Nicolau's research project for the DAAD Artist-in-Berlin programme focuses on the capacity of artistic practices to revise history and to evoke it from current impulses. Nicolau analyses the strategies of artistic research and literary fiction that aim to rewrite historical narratives and are capable of constructing collective memory, tracing their own genealogies and conjuring up ghosts. Starting from the temporary vortex opened up by a tent in a cemetery - a quotation taken from Toni Morrison's introduction to her novel Beloved - this research aims primarily to analyse the logics of contemporary mythology, to trace specific methods of distribution in artistic practices and to explore the links between contemporary art and literature.

In the context of the DAAD, the research also addresses the role of art institutions as mythological and mythologising agents. By analysing some of the narratives that permeate the institution, her intention is to understand the mythology of the place, to question the inherited narratives and to imagine particular genealogies, thinking of art history through curatorial practice as a set of art mythologies, in order to focus on how these affect current artistic work. On the other hand, she will also analyse the political, social and cultural context of the city of Berlin as far as the mechanisms of historical revision and the creation of collective memory are concerned, paying particular attention to how the mythology of the city is configured, from the historical-tourist narrative to concrete political experiences.

BIO

Manuela Pedrón Nicolau is an independent curator and educator. She is particularly interested in issues related to artistic research and forms of narration that explore the social and political in this field. Together with Jaime González Cela, she has curated exhibitions at CaixaForum Barcelona, the Museo de la BNE and La Fragua de Tabacalera Promoción del Arte, among others. They have both received scholarships for residencies at the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, Hangar Barcelona and the Huarte Centre in Pamplona. They currently run the CRÁTER programme at the Sala de Arte Joven and the VENECIA reading club at La Casa Encendida. In 2023, together with Adriana Reyes and Carolina Sisabel, she directed the CA2M's Popular University which was dedicated to ways of accessing the knowledge and understanding of the environment through artistic, technological and ritual practices that relations with other forms of life and spirituality make possible. In the same vein, together with Adriana Reyes, she led the laboratory Algo que no sabemos que sabemos pero sabemos (Something We Don’t Know that We Know but We Do Know) for the Hacer Historia(s) Festival volume 4 (Barcelona, 2021). She was also a member of the Catenaria collective, with whom she worked on independent projects and won the Inéditos 2014 competition at La Casa Encendida.

She is a recipient of the Mobility Residency for Curators of Matadero Madrid’s Centre for Artists in Residence in collaboration with DAAD Artists in Berlin programme.

* Image credits: Belén Pastor, MÁQUINA Festival (Las Cigarreras, Alicante)