THE MOTHER OF US ALL
Miguel Ángel Benjumea
Del 16 Feb al 13 Abr 2019
SALA DE EXPOSICIONES SANTA INéS
CATÁLOGO
The opera The Mother of Us All (Gertrude Stein) made its dramatic debut in the 1940s, bringing together characters from different periods on stage to propose a new order in which women form a body politic independent of men, determined to achieve not only the right to vote and receive an education, but also equality in civil rights, parental authority and wages. Miguel Ángel Benjumea’s re-enactment, featuring a solitary woman wandering in a desolate landscape as she insistently repeats phrases from Stein’s libretto, revises and updates the feminist meaning of the original text, reminding us of where it came from and the importance of embracing that past in order to cope with the pressing needs of new feminisms. These new movements have problematised the struggle of the man/woman dichotomy, and today they require not a collective body but many bodies united by feminist demands that deconstruct the relationship between identity and biology, thereby exposing the violence inherent in subjecting bodies to any prolonged form of hierarchy. The project’s master is Juan Martorell Colom.
The exhibition catalogue features an essaies by Violeta Janeiro Alfageme, Anna Moreno and Miguel Ángel Benjumea.
Openning: 15 February, 20.00h
GALERÍA
TAGS
Cádiz, 1982
Miguel Ángel Benjumea earned a PhD (cum laude) with his thesis on “Dissident Cartographies: Urban Phenomenologies, Maps and Artistic Transgression”, an MA in Visual Arts and Intermedia and a BFA from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. His work has gradually drifted towards and focused on the convergence of elements drawn from various cultural production strategies, such as the archive, maps and sound. His visual oeuvre reviews the historical tensions that still pervade the definition of territory. He also investigates the problem of the new geographical world disorder. Benjumea is interested in the intersections between microhistories, popular culture and world history, relationships he explores by appropriating existing cultural formats and devices that serve as a pretext for questioning certain social realities.
He has given courses and workshops on the need to rewrite geography through artistic practice and pursued his theoretical research in cities like New York, where he was a resident at the Carriage House Center for the Arts. His artwork has appeared in various publications. Benjumea has received several distinctions in competitions and has exhibited at numerous galleries and art centres across Spain.
