Matadero Madrid center for contemporary creation
Contra la raza [Against Race]
Free entrance
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Avoiding a single linear narrative that transcends limited ideas of how race, identity and territory are conceived, this exhibition features audiovisual imagery to tell a multiplicity of stories creating a constellation of stories – personal and historical; real and imagined – creating a common liminal space based on different notions of solidarity. It is inspired by the eponymous book by British historian Paul Gilroy, Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line (2000), which addresses the fundamental role played by anticolonial and antiracist movements in the historical and contemporary struggle for human rights, which ultimately appeal to our collective consciousness to advocate for the establishment of a new planetary humanism.
Nave 0 hosts a multimedia installation of Relic Traveller by Larry Achiampong, alongside a group screening loop of seventeen audiovisual works by artists Ramone Anderson, Rubén H. Bermúdez, Sally Fenaux, Amartey Golding, Jérôme Havre, Julianknxx, Katia Kameli, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Grada Kilomba, Mónica de Miranda, Nástio Mosquito, Paulo Nazareth, Heidi Ramírez, Sara Sadik, Berni Searle, Cauleen Smith, Camille Turner and Belinda Zhawi. This group of international artists all explore ideas of identity politics from a geopoetic perspective – from the individual to the collective, the domestic to the spectacular.
From 29 to 31 October there will be a live programme of screenings, conversations and performances at Cineteca Madrid and Intermediae Matadero. This special weekend invites you to meet some of the artists participating in the exhibition, and include the following events.
On Friday 29 the programme opens with the first-ever screening of Larry Achiampong’s full Relic Traveller series to date, accompanied by an online artist talk with The Showroom, London’s Curator-at-Large Katherine Finerty exploring the decolonial narratives about identity, migration, technology and agency.
Saturday 30 will feature a project screening and conversation, Taxidermy of the Future curated by Bruno Leitão and Paula Nascimento, bringing together works by artists Kiluanji Kia Henda, Grada Kilomba, and Mónica de Miranda that dissects persistent spectres in both European and African societies; and the artist talk Collective Geopoetics with Contra la Raza Curator, MACBA Director Elvira Dyangani Ose, Sally Fenaux Barleycorn and Heidi Ramírez, and moderated by photographer and professor Rubén H. Bermudez highlighting Spain-based artist collectives through works by these two artists.
On Saturday 30 and Sunday 31 this programme presents in two different sessions the performance SOUTH X SOUTH EAST by Belinda Zhawi combining poetry and sound to explore the emotional landscape of youth migration whilst interrogating what it means to forge identities based on geographies.
Contra la Raza [Against Race] is curated by the newly appointed MACBA Director Elvira Dyangani Ose in collaboration with The Showroom, London, with Co-Curator Katherine Finerty, and supported by Raúl Muñoz de la Vega. It is presented at Matadero Madrid with partners Cineteca Madrid and Taxidermy of The Future.
Larry Achiampong. Video still from Relic 2, 2017. © Larry Achiampong. All rights reserved, DACS 2021. Courtesy, Copperfield, London
