MUSEUM EXHIBITION "CÀMARA I CIUTAT"

CRITICAL REFLECTION ON THE EXHIBITION SPACE

The following critical reflection on the exhition "Càmara i Ciutat" from Cosmocaixa has been done with Anna López, Andrea Moriana, Laia García, Eva Granero, Berta Montaña and me (Manel Márquez)

Explain how you value the intervention in space and distribution of the work in the rooms.

It was organised by chronological pictures and nationalities that were distributed by sections within the hall. The space was very well distributed because the visitor could walk around the whole room without losing track of the evolution and sequence of the pictures. Moreover, the rooms were big enough to allow a proper flow of people, allowing them to see the images in a quiet and comfortable way.

Describe colours and typefaces used to explain, to accompany and signal the work. Relate it to the work. Means, techniques and supports used.

The different areas of the exhibition were divided with some different aspects that had a purpose. The general aspect that we could appreciate that differentiates one area with another one was the colour of the walls, for example ones were painted in dark grey and some in white. The purpose of this was to divide one area to another one by means of time. You can see an example below of some of the pictures.

Another aspect that we could value is that the pictures represented had a specific frame. For instance, it could mean that all the pictures within an area that had the same frame could belong to the same artist, or to the same place, or to the same historical time, or to the same meaning, etc. You can see an example below of a lot of pictures that belong to the same artist. Also in the example, before it can be seen how there are two pictures of the same artist.

It was also quite interesting the way in which the information and the different pieces of art were showed, for instance in one of the parts of the museum there was a lot of newspapers of that specific time, and all this newspaper were displayed on a kiosk painted in the wall.

Another example of the originality of the museum where the interactive activities, placed almost at the end of the exhibition, in this activity we could create a specific scene with the different objects, like a boy riding a bike, a bench, a dog or clothes hanged, as in the following example.

REFLECTION ON THE ART PROPOSAL

What interested you the most?

Focusing on what interested us the most, we have to mention the quality and meaning of photographs and videos. All of them had an intention and a purpose to express some feelings or emotions to the spectator and through its high quality it was easily achieved.

What have you researched out of the classroom?

On the website of “CÀMARA I CIUTAT”, we found information about the purpose of the exhibition. It explained to us the way in which the photography has captured the essence of the XX century, depicting the streets as a social scenario of civic and political revolution. Apart from the information taken from the official website, we have also looked up some professional concepts on the way we can extract and figure out the meaning of a photography. Some of the concepts that we have learned about are the following:

-General vision
-Technique
-Composition 
-Meaning

What are the most interesting works? Why? What do they have in common?

The most interesting works are:

-André Kertész, París a l’estiu, una tarda de tempesta, 1925.

-Marc Riboud, La noia amb la flor, 1967.

-Valérie Jouve, Sense títol núm.3, 1994.

They were interesting for us because they transmitted sadness, and they showed situations that we are not used to see in pictures. La noia amb la flor and París a l’estiu are black and white pictures, while Sense títol núm. 3 is a coloured photography. They are all from the Musée National d’Art Moderne, París.

What does this exposition make you think about?

This exposition makes us think about how the modern cities were during the XXth century, by looking at photographs of streets as social scenery or a school playground. It makes us reflect on how it was to live in XXth century and think about how different it was from our current way of living.

Do you think it can inspire you to do a classroom intervention?

We really think this exhibition about photography and cinema throughout history can certainly be used as an inspiration to do classroom interventions. Taking into consideration the importance and analysis of moments captured, we could include in class discussion about the interpretation of the meaning that these pieces of work could have. Moreover, we could include the study of its characteristics and to do something more practical, for instance, working on some kind of contests based on photos taken by ourselves.

REFERENCES

Alfonso (n.d.). ¿Cómo hacer un análisis de una foto? Retrieved from https://www.reflejandome.com/aprende-fotografia/como-hacer-un-analisis-de-una-foto-2/

Caixa Forum (n.d.). Cámara y ciudad. La vida urbana en la fotografí­a y el cine | Actividades CaixaForum Barcelona. Retrieved January 13, 2020, from https://caixaforum.es/es/barcelona/p/camara-y-ciudad-la-vida-urbana-en-la-fotografia-y-el-cine_a581881

PAINTING LAST SUPPER CARDBOARD

We drew a cardboard of the last supper we will put on in the upcoming months. This cardboard included the twelve apostles having dinner with jesus. After having drawn it, we used different paints to paint the cardboard. By mixing different primary colours we got to make new ones, for instance, when mixing blue and yellow we got green. After that, with a brush we started to paint the drawing.

As it follows you can see the image of what we did:

COMIC STRIPS: THE LAST SUPPER

The last supper is a representation that Laia García, Berta Montaña, Andrea Moriana, Eva Granero, Ana López and me (Manel Márquez) will do about the religous last supper. This representation will be a claim for social justice, highlighting the importance to stand for human rights, therefore, our performance deals with topics such as feminism, LGBTIQ+, antiracism, inclusion ... To understand the way our performance is going to be done, we have created a comic strip to show the  phases of our performance. You can see it in the following image:

CAIXAFORUM VISIT

The visit to Caixaforum dealt with contemporary art. We were explained the main features of this type of art, which consists on pondering about unfair situations of our current world and the pursue of social justice. The tour guide presented us three different activities belonging to the exhibition "Caiguda lliure".

The first one dealt with a yellow plastic maze in which evryone had to go through in order to experience any sensation that we could feel in there. Once we had finished walking through it, we started wondering about the colour of the plastic structure, material, design ..., all of us came to the conclusion that the maze was made of plastic with a yellow colour due to the need to recycle so as to preserve our planet in good condition. We also came up with the idea of being inside wandering and not knowing where to go, finding ourselves entirely lost. Curiously, the deeper we were going, the slower we felt we were walking, having no vision of possible ways ahead of us, just a slight curtain of soft yellow plastic allowed us to see some of the possible ways by our sides.

My impression about this exhibition awe-inspires me. I was mind-blown to have been the main character of the piece of art and the way there was a connection between it and me, in the sense that it made me wonder about many problems we have in our society and the need to sorte them out. 

As for the second activity, we were put in groups and shown different objects in a glass cabinet. Besides, we were given a sheet of paper having some questions to answer about them. In groups, we had to hazard a guess about the origin of the object, age, the person whose object might have belonged to ..., having said all we thought about it, we expressed that all those objects belonged to a wealthy eastern man from late 50s. Then, the tour guide asked us: Do objects have gender? After that question, we all realised that our society has assigned certain objects to genders, being an imposition of our cisheteropatriarcal society. Therefore, as future teachers I consider this activity a must to be worked on children for the promotion of critical thinking about that the society that surround us and possible bits they can do to change in the future.

My impression about the activity is that this dynamic and first person experience on the piece of art absolutely enriches the learning of everyone, getting yourslef into the real exhibition. What I most appreciate is the way it fosters critical-thinking and the claim of injustices in our current world.

Finally, in the last activity, we were given a cardboard in which per groups we had to paint, trim and stick different handicrafts into it, relating them to some well-known person. At the end of the activity, all our peers knew who we had depicted: "Lluís Quintana", a teacher of primary education whose teaching imparted had been flawless. Overall, the activity was of great use to work the different notions of recognition and artistic abilities.

Apart from those three guided exhibitions, we had time to walk around and see some other exhibitions of contemporary art, for instance, drawings, projections, listenings, etc. We visited the opera exhibition and the exhibitions about the fascism. They were really exciting as it explained through art and history the past events that happened in our time, which is a reminder of the mistakes that were made by mankind and never must be repeated.

To sum up, the experience was amazing due to all the things learned and that will likely be remembered forever more by all of us. Undoubtedly, it is an exhibition that will help us as future teacher to have some references about how deal with social injustices through art.

A BUNCH OF GRAPES

The following painting represents a bunch of grapes which have been copied from a real plastic object, trying to depict reality into a drawing by means of using two basic colours: brown and green in order to show the object in its most similar appearance.

LAIA PORTRAIT

As it follows you can see the portrait of a student from primary education group 71, seminar B. The portrait has been drawn just with a pencil, trying to represent all the traits of Laia.

TWO OBJECTS DRAWING: DOLPCIN

The following drawing combines a dolphin and a laptop. The aim of it is to astonish people's minds in order to leave something to think about how technology has contributed to the well-being or harm on doplhins. The result of the creation coins a new word for the work: DOLPCIN.