MACBA Museum: Exhibition of Melanie Smith

The work Farse and Artifice of the English artist Melanie Smith arrived at MACBA. On the 3rd October of 2018, we went to her exhibition which was formed by different stages. Here, I'll highlight some aspects about some of the works we had the chance to see. In her works, she tends to mix fiction and reality, between of which there are no barriers. Apart from that, she plays with the concept of abstraction which, she believes, is utopic and she reflects also on the absurd. 

First of all, we watched her film called Aztec Stadium: Malleable Dee in which a work of Paul Klee appears. The action happens in the Aztec Stadium of Mexico, where the artist moved out. Students from Secondary Schools show their papers that create a major picture, a work. Smith collaborated with Televisia in order to achieve the final product. With this performance, she wanted to express the idea of group, everyone constructs the images which represent the reality and the fact of deconstructing the picture shows the reality. For her history is cyclic. In this work, she plays with the self (own) and the globalisation wich represent the modernity, shown for example with the Cocacola sign. 

In addition to this, we went to a different section of the exhibition in which we found a TV playing a salsa dance video in which we could see a cuban man dancing and teaching a woman (who wasn't Smith, but who represented her). This video was meant to express the shock between cultures and it was accompanied by different elements related to the culture or the environment we can find in that country, such a palm tree. This creation reminded me my culture from the Val d'Aran, since we also have traditional dances and I know it can be difficult to teach those dances to people sometimes. It also recall my experience in the USA school exchange programme, because I know it can't be much easy to adapt yourself into the culture.

Moreover, the next work confused me, not only because it had different ideas and objects mixted that between some of them there wasn't any connection. What really got my attention was an ear, gigant ear appearing in the work. Then, I kind of understand from the guides explanation that it was meant to be strange, artificial and exaggerated; although I did not understand anything at first. 

These were some of her works, mainly the ones that surprised me the most, whether it was because of its elements or because of the way she presented it. 

From this museum visit, what I'll remember is the creativity of such a modern artist, her capacity to use different sources, not only the expected ones like paintings, sculptures, among others, and be able to combine them to show people how she understands the world, which is kind of impressive and difficult to acomplish.