Exhibitions
MORTALS+: art, memory and HIV/AIDS in a space to think about life and its margins
An exhibition at the Suñol Foundation that brings together testimonies, collective research and contemporary works to give voice to silenced narratives and reconnect the past, present and future of the epidemic.
MORTALS+ is an exhibition born from a collective research project that connects art, health and memory. The proposal brings together testimonies and perspectives of people linked to HIV/AIDS, and turns their experiences into a space for artistic and social reflection. The result is a journey that reclaims collective memory, explores the politics of the body and gives visibility to the often silenced narratives of this reality.
Last December 1st was World AIDS Day and art becomes a bridge between memory and the present. Through works, gestures and looks, the artistic world remembers those who are no longer there, accompanies those who continue to fight and celebrates the progress achieved. Art has the capacity to transform pain into expression, invisibility into narrative and stigma into collective consciousness.
Susana Solano, Couple No. 1, 1988, Suñol Soler Collection.
This new temporary exhibition, which will be on view until March 13, is presented as the natural continuation of MORTALS , a project that, for years, has been collectively investigating issues such as death, illness, care and the very experience of living through artistic language. In this new edition, the involvement of the Suñol Foundation —responsible for one of the most relevant private collections of contemporary art in the country— and the Glòria Soler Foundation —committed to global health research and the intersection between art and science— has made possible a meeting space between art, health and memory. A space that connects the legacies of the past with the current realities of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Access to the Suñol Soler Collection has allowed connections to be drawn between various artistic pieces and the ideas that emerged during the work sessions with the MORTALS+ group. This group, made up of people linked to HIV/AIDS, researchers, activists and health professionals, has contributed to generating a shared discourse that enriches and re-signifies the selected works.
Chema Cobo, Sweet swimmers, 3 self-watchers, 1981-1982, Suñol Soler Collection.
From Pleasure to Stigma , Testimonies , Monsters and Stigma and Letter to the Universe articulate the common thread of an exhibition that proposes an open and non-linear journey. The exhibition begins by evoking the context of freedom and sexual exploration of the eighties, and then delves into the stories, fears and imaginaries that have marked the experience of HIV/AIDS. The journey culminates with the video Mortals+ (2025), presented in dialogue with Sense títol (1970), by Zush/Evru, a coexistence that closes the proposal by placing past and present in poetic and critical tension.
