From June 13 to September 15, 2024, Same Word, a solo exhibition by Julia Spínola, curated by Elfi Turpin, in collaboration with Artium Museoa, Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country.
During a preparatory meeting, Julia Spínola talked us through the issues at play in this exhibition by presenting a series of workshops* she has organized over the last few years, which have led her to produce series of forms and gestures with different groups of people. The imagined situations are simple. To copy something in order to understand its mechanism. To do without knowing how. To invent techniques using the most rudimentary materials available: cardboard, glue, string, tape, packaging, leaflets, saliva, hands. To organize the conditions for horizontal learning. To stimulate creativity.
To understand Julia Spínola’s work is to practice it rather than discuss it, to apprehend it in the primary sense of the word, that is, to grasp it with the body. The exhibition Same Word is an invitation to this experience of apprehending, an invitation to “rub shoulders” with the works in order to discover their language. The two words Same Word could, in fact, suffice in themselves to introduce this exhibition, an exhibition in which the same form can be repeated to take on multiple contents and functions, and to exist equivocally in this multitude of uses or in the uncertainty of the perception of its outer layer. Is it a bag? Is it a fruit? Is it a smile? Is it a color? Is it solid? Is it rigid? Is it soft? Is it liquid?
Two or more words with identical pronunciation but different meanings are called homonyms. By extension, we could also call two or more artworks identical in form but different in uses homonyms. The exhibition Same Word then becomes a space for the metamorphosis of the same into the other: a paradise of homonymy.
—E.T., May 2024.
* CopyScaleDila & Imagen, Huarte Contemporary Art Center (Pamplona) and Illa Art and Design School (Sabadell); DoToTime & Imagen, JAI-Institute for Artistic Practices, Artium Museoa, Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country (Vitoria-Gasteiz); AnObjectForAnAlien, ColorObjectDayNight, Ears, Parangolés & SilkscreensWalls, EINA University School of Design and Art of Barcelona; Malla Gría, etHALL Gallery (Barcelona); aTube, in the context of the “In Residency” program at the Institute of Culture of Barcelona.
On this occasion, a free shuttle will leave from Art Basel. Departure from Bleichestrasse at 7 pm, return to Basel at 10.30 pm. For reservations, please contact Maria Gamboa: m.gamboa@cracalsace.com.
Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) supports the exhibition through the Program for the Internationalisation of Spanish Culture.
