Abierto x Obras - Eva Fàbregas [Breathe with the wound ]

These organic forms, volumes and wrinkled membranes are made from synthetic fibres that accentuate the wounds and scars that run through the building. At first sight, they look like scattered bodies of different scales, or the internal anatomy of an affected organism. Sounds emanate from all their cavities and the channels that allow breathing and the flow of vital fluids even in adverse situations.

In her intervention for the Abierto x Obras programme, the artist Eva Fàbregas has installed a series of sculptures in the interior of the cold storage unit of the former slaughterhouse. The works are based on a play of tension and distension, the manipulation of synthetic fibres and the different drying times of latex. Deliberately monochrome by nature, the sculptures and the way in which they are arranged – from the floor to the ceiling, from the walls to the columns – highlight the building’s fractures, which proliferate in the cracks in the architecture, allowing us to see the seams of the space and those of the works themselves.

The work that goes into creating these pieces is a ritual based on searching and repetition. In the larger sculptures, the artist applies latex to containers made from a flexible material that gradually inflates and deflates, exploring different effects of appearance and suspension. She literally breathes air into these sculptures – she makes them breathe – through their connecting orifices in the shape of a navel - the first scar on everyone’s body. The same thing happens with the smaller ensembles which are linked together by a common axis, as if they were clusters of organs. In other sculptures in this installation, the ones that seem to be joined together by an umbilical cord, the forms are the result of the pressure and torsion exerted on the elastic fabric that is the common thread running through them all.

The works that Eva Fàbregas has created specifically for Abierto x Obras are part of her ongoing series Exudates, a title that refers to the fluids that exude, that ooze from living organisms in response to a wound or inflammation. Although exudation is also part of any healing process, an excessive amount or composition can impair recovery. In this way, the sculptures proliferate within the space, inhabiting and transforming it, while at the same time introducing a symbolic element for their rehabilitation.

Abierto x Obras

Abierto x Obras, at Matadero Madrid, is a programme of site-specific interventions that invites artists to produce a new work by encouraging the experimental nature of contemporary creation through approaches that explore the relationship between art and the place in which it is housed, the former cold storage unit of the slaughterhouse. An 800-metre room that still retains its original appearance and the signs of a fire that broke out in the 1990s. A space characterised by its diaphanous structure of cantilevered arches and columns.

In its previous incarnation, between 2007 and 2018, the Abierto x Obras programme offered the Madrid public unique interventions by artists such as Daniel Canogar, Jannis Kounnellis, Román Signer, Carlos Garaicoa, Fernando Sánchez Castillo, Jordi Colomer, Los Carpinteros, Cristina Lucas, Cabello/Carceller, Elena Alonso and Teresa Solar, among others. In 2025, Matadero Madrid has decided to relaunch Abierto x Obras as part of its clear commitment to promoting contemporary artistic practices that seek a relationship with the place in which they are developed.

Biography

In her sculptures and installations, Eva Fàbregas (Barcelona, 1988) often works with soft and malleable materials, emphasising the physical and sensory dimension of forms with a series of suspended and lightweight works in which air is of the essence. Her most notable recent exhibitions include, among others: Exudates, MAC Mataró; MANIFESTA 15 (Barcelona); Intención Poética, MACBA, When forms come alive, Hayward Gallery, London; Devouring Lovers, Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin); Enredos, Centro Botín (Santander); The London Open, Whitechapel Gallery (London); Growths, Biennale de Lyon; Vessels, Bombon Projects (Barcelona); La próxima mutación, Fundación ”la Caixa” (Barcelona); Skin-like. Kunsthal, Gent; Touch Me Not, The Ryder, (Madrid); Un Momento Atemporal, Tabacalera, (Madrid); Yokohama Triennale 2020, Yokohama Museum of Art; Gut Feeling, CentroCentro (Madrid); Those things that your fingers can tell, Kunstverein Munchen (Munich; Polifilia, García Galería (Madrid); Myths of the near future, TEA (Tenerife); Polymeric Lust, Arte Display (Berlín); Every object is a thing but not everything is an object, Hollybush Gardens (London); Who cares? A radio tale, Gasworks / Resonance 104.4 FM (London); First Act: Smooth Operations, Laure Genillard Gallery (London); Picture yourself as a block of melting butter, Fundación Miró (Barcelona); How are you feeling today?, Window Space, Whitechapel, (London); Eva Fàbregas & Andrew Lacon, Kunstraum (London).