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Home , Magnum Foundation, Susan Meiselas

WWW.FUNDACIOTAPIES.ORG No.8

FROM 11 OCTOBER, 2017, TO 14 JANUARY, 2018 SUSAN MEISELAS. MEDIATIONS P.2

Mediations 11.10.2017 − 14.01.2018

Susan Meiselas (, Maryland, 1948) The career of Susan Meiselas reflects the most relevant transformations of modern photography. Since of she started practising documentary photography in the 1970s, her work has questioned the exchanges that occur with the individu- als she portrays, whether they are women performing in a travelling striptease show, subjected to the vexing gaze of their clients, or the victims of members of the Kurdish community unearthed after the Anfal military operation, a campaign directed against this community by the regime of Saddam Hussein. Meiselas has never been able to associate within the confines of a style. Each of her projects, many of them of long du- ration, introduces a radical and ongoing questioning of the photographic act. Meiselas's subjects participate in the rep- resentation of themselves. INTRODUCTION P. 3

In the late 1970s, she became one of the most celebrated photojournalists in the for works such as her cover- age of the Sandinista Popular Revolution, often tainted by the uncertainty experienced before the events. Despite hav- ing worked on assignment for , Meiselas observed the revolution as an event that defied normal press procedures. With Mediations (1982), the project that lends its title to this retrospective exhibition, Meiselas discov- ered the contingency of photography. Her Nicaraguan images published in different countries revealed that the circulation of her photographs generated a new space for the production of meanings, with interpretations that were beyond the control of the author.

At a time when, thanks to new technologies, photography has become the object of an all-reaching exchange, Meiselas’s at- titude becomes unprecedented. The postproduction of images has overcome the classic concept of photography as an act of framing and capturing what happens in front of the camera. In this context, Meiselas’s archival projects constitute a valu- able precedent. Two of them, the ones devoted to Nicaragua and Kurdistan, are widely represented in this exhibition. Dis- played as installations, they deploy a photographic apparatus based on extended times of perception and the compilation of a visual history that challenges the foundations of modern photography.

Co-produced by the Fundació Antoni Tàpies and the Jeu de Paume, the exhibition also includes a selection of photo- graphic series that consolidate the role of Meiselas as a pioneer in the critical revisions of documentary photogra- phy, a position she shares with artists such as Allan Sekula and Martha Rosler. These series are accompanied for the first time by unpublished documents and materials that re- veal the personal, technical and political complexities of the work of Meiselas. SUSAN MEISELAS. MEDIATIONS P.4

1948 Carolina Arts Commission and Arts Born 21 June in Baltimore, Maryland. Commission. While teaching photography and an- imation in rural communities, she begins a 1970 series called Porch Portraits that depicts en- Receives a B.A. from , counters with strangers in the South. Bronxville, New York. 1974 1971 Continues to work in , Receives an M.Ed., Master’s degree in Visual where she develops a Bicentennial project Education, from School of Ed- with teenagers. They collect photograph- ucation. While living at 44 Irving Street, a ic and oral histories for the exhibition A boarding house in Cambridge, Meiselas takes Photographic Genealogy: The History of Lando, 4 x 5” portraits of fellow residents. Each a company-owned mill town in South Carolina. portrait is accompanied by a text in which the Participates in her first group exhibition, subjects comment on how they see themselves Daredevils & Showgirls, at the Brockton Art represented in the photograph. Simultaneously Center in Brockton, Massachusetts, where she she works as an assistant editor to filmmaker shows work focusing on the life of one strip- Fred Wiseman on Basic Training. per, Lena.

1972 1975 Becomes a Photographic Consultant at the Appointed to the faculty of the Center for Community Resources Institute, where she de- Understanding Media, New School for Social velops a curriculum for teachers in New York Research, New York, and works with media stud- City public schools using visual materials. ies educators in local public schools. As a During the summer, while following state consultant for the Polaroid Foundation, she fairs, she encounters the itinerant girl conceives of and edits Learn to See, a compi- shows, which she then follows for the next lation of the work of teachers using Polaroid three years. materials in the classroom. Her first solo show, Carnival Strippers, opens at the CEPA 1973 Gallery in Buffalo, New York; accompanying the Travels to South Carolina and Mississippi photographs are audio recordings made with the as an artist-in-residence with the South strippers, their managers and spectators. CHRONOLOGY P. 5

1976 the Overseas Press Club. She will continue to Joins . Carnival Strippers is photograph in Nicaragua over the next twen- published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the ty-five years. and Éditions du Chêne in . She begins a project called Prince Street 1980 Girls, in which she photographs girls living Continues to live and work in Central America. in her neighbourhood in Little . In the Documents the discovery and exhumation of the winter, she begins to photograph homeless men American Maryknoll sisters, killed by death living on the Bowery in . These squads in , 4 December 1980. men take temporary jobs as Santa Claus with the Volunteers of America. The Volunteers of 1981 America series continues through 1978. In January, Meiselas is wounded in a land-mine explosion near Suchitoto, El Salvador, while 1977 on assignment for Time covering the ‘Last Travels to Latin America for the first time. Offensive’ of the FMLN. With her is photogra- She visits Cuba with seven other American pher John Hoagland, who is also wounded, and photographers through the Center for Cuban cameraman Ian Mates, who is killed. She travels Studies; Parsons Gallery in New York orga- to to photograph the Mothers of the nizes an exhibition of their work. In May, Plaza de Mayo and the ‘disappeared’; the pho- the Everyman Company of Brooklyn, directed tographs are published in the September issue by Ricardo E. Velez, produces a play called of Life. Nicaragua, June 1978 – July 1979 is Strippers based on the interviews used in the published by Pantheon, with editions in Spanish book. She travels to Chad in the fall with and French. In December, she photographs the French filmmaker Raymond Depardon to cover the aftermath of the El Mozote Massacre with The civil war and resulting refugee crisis. They New York Times reporter . The follow Bernard Kouchner, cofounder of Doctors New York Times publishes the photographs on 21 without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, on February 1982, and the work is later used as one of their first missions. evidence in congressional debates to halt U.S. military aid to El Salvador. 1978 Travels to Nicaragua for the first time in 1982 June, staying six weeks. Her photographs are Presents Mediations, an exhibition decon- published in The New York Times Magazine under structing the way the international media pub- the headline ‘National Mutiny in Nicaragua’ (30 lishes her photographs from Nicaragua, first July 1978). She returns to Nicaragua in August at Side Gallery, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and later just after the National Palace in Managua is at Camerawork, London. captured and before the first insurrections begin in Masaya, Esteli and Matagalpa. 1983 Documents the destruction of infrastructure 1979 and villages in northern Nicaragua by the con- Makes her first trip to El Salvador with Alan tras during the U.S.-backed ‘counter-revolu- Riding for The New York Times to cover the tion’ and continues to photograph extensively assassinations of local priests. She returns in El Salvador. With Harry Mattison and Fae after the October military coup and covers the Rubenstein, she edits El Salvador: Work of Thirty civil war for the next four years, including Photographers, published by Writers & Readers. the popular resistance and the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN). During 1984 this period, she also continues to photograph Curates the exhibition From Central America, the conflict in Nicaragua, covering Sandinista held at Central Hall in New York, in conjunction training camps in Costa Rica and the northern with Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in mountains of Nicaragua, the last offensive in Central America. In collaboration with Visual Masaya and Managua, and the beginning of re- Studies Workshop, she organizes the touring construction following the overthrow of Somoza exhibition Inside El Salvador. The show begins on 19 July. For her photographs of Nicaragua, at the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, she receives the from and the International Center of Photography, SUSAN MEISELAS. MEDIATIONS P.6

New York, travelling to colleges, public li- through 1990. The photographs are exhibited braries and museums over the next two years. in Los Vecinos at the Museum of Photographic Mediations is presented again at the Museum Arts, San Diego; the exhibition includes Folkwang in Essen, . the work of three Mexican and four American photographers. 1985 Directs and produces, with Alfred Guzzetti and 1990 Richard Rogers, the film Living at Risk: The Collaborates with Chilean photographers on ed- Story of a Nicaraguan Family. For the ex- iting the book from Within, which in- perimental documentary Voyages, produced in cludes the work of sixteen Chilean photogra- collaboration with director Marc Karlin for phers (published by W.W. Norton). Photographs Channel 4 (UK), she co-writes a narration re- from her border project are integrated with flecting on her work in Nicaragua. In the photographs from her Latin American work in winter, she travels with Ray Bonner to the the exhibition Crossings at the Art Institute to cover the 1986 re-election of of . Ferdinand Marcos for the New York Times. 1991 1986 Becomes a Gahan Fellow at the Carpenter Stays in the Philippines for six months to Center, Harvard University where she teach- follow the People Power Revolution and the es photography and co-edits Pictures from election of Corazon Aquino; her work there a Revolution. In April, she photographs includes a photo-essay on ‘Mail-Order Brides’ the meeting between Danielle Mitterand and for the The New York Times Magazine. Her co- Massoud Barzani on the - border and lour work from Nicaragua is included in On the then enters Northern Iraq for the first time Line, an exhibition at the Walker Art Center to document the destroyed villages of Saddam in Minneapolis. Hussein’s 1988 Anfal campaign. In October, Pictures from a Revolution opens at the New 1987 York Film Festival. That same month, Meiselas Continues to work in Nicaragua, covering the joins the project Women’s Work, commissioned impact of the contra war and the beginnings of by the Liz Claiborne Foundation, along with the peace process. five other photographers; she works with the San Francisco Police Department and the 1988 District Attorney’s Office to investigate Travels to to document the escalating domestic violence. The resulting photo-col- political violence against human rights moni- lages are installed on bus shelters around tors, and to Chile to cover the Pinochet ref- the city in 1992, and later published in erendum. Collaborates with anthropologist and Grand Street as Archives of Abuse. She re- filmmaker Robert Gardner on his return to the turns to Iraq in December with the forensic Baliem Valley in Irian Jaya (now West Papua), anthropologist Clyde Snow and Physicians for Indonesia. They travel to the highlands to Human Rights to record the exhumation of reconnect with the indigenous Dani tribe, whom mass graves from the Anfal campaign. During Gardner had first filmed in 1961 for his doc- this trip, she begins to collect a visual umentary Dead Birds. history of the Kurdish people; the project continues through 1997. 1989 Continues work in Argentina and Chile. In 1992 July, she returns to Nicaragua with filmmakers With the support of a MacArthur Fellowship, Richard Rogers and Alfred Guzzetti for the she continues work on the Kurdistan project, tenth anniversary of the overthrow of Somoza. organizing a network of researchers, includ- She begins the process of locating the sub- ing exiled Kurdish scholars, to gather photo- jects of her photographs from the insurrection graphs and other documents of Kurdish history of 1978–79 to make the film Pictures from in Western archives and from members of the a Revolution. In the fall, she photographs Kurdish diaspora throughout . Becomes undocumented workers attempting to cross the a graduate seminar instructor at Cal Arts in U.S.- border, a project that continues Los Angeles. CHRONOLOGY P. 7 Snapshot of Susan Meiselas, by Cate Muther, 1975. Visitors reading stories from the akaKurdistan map, DEPO, Istanbul,2014. Courtesy Susan Meiselas. CHRONOLOGY P. 9

1993 1998 Returns to El Salvador in February with Ray Returns to Mexico to photograph the missing Bonner and 60 Minutes during the exhumation women of Ciudad Juarez, then accepts a visit- of the El Mozote Massacre site. Later that ing lectureship at Carpenter Center, Harvard year, she and Bonner report on the Nagorno- University. She begins curating Moving Walls, Karabakh War in and the Republic of rotating installations of work by documentary , while she continues collect- photographers sponsored by the Open Society ing Kurdish archival documents in Yerevan, Institute in New York. Armenia. 1999 Continues her work on domestic violence with 1994 the Chicago District Attorney’s office while Receives the Hasselblad Foundation Prize and a Globalization Fellow in Human Rights at her photographs are exhibited at the Hasselblad the University of Chicago. She contributes Center in Göteborg, , including some a series of panoramic photographs focused on materials gathered from Kurdistan. Receives women and urban street life to the National the Maria Moors Cabot prize from Columbia Millennium Survey organized by James Enyeart. University Graduate School of Journalism for her decade of work in Latin America. 2000 Carnival Strippers is exhibited at the Whitney 1995 Museum of American Art, New York. Meiselas Photographs the clientele of a New York returns to Nicaragua to photograph land-mine City S&M club, Pandora’s Box. Receives a victims from the contra war in collaboration Rockefeller Foundation Multi-Media Fellowship with Handicap International. to develop the website akaKURDISTAN.com as a site of collective memory and exchange with 2001 Picture Projects. Organizes the exhibition From the Stone Age to the Digital Age: The Dani of the Baliem Valley, 1996 a visual history documenting the ‘discovery’ Photographs in Tajikistan and Northern of the Dani and their exposure through photog- for the Open Society Institute, raphy as related to Dutch colonialism. Held at which allows her to continue gathering photo- the Nederlands Foto Instituut in Rotterdam as graphs from Kurds in Kazakhstan. She creates part of a Photoworks in Progress Commission, a collage, Evidence/Identity, for the Facing the exhibition later travels to the Mois de la History show at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Photo in Montreal. Pandora’s Box is published Paris, and all the collected objects are by Magnum Editions. She photographs the col- brought together in Kurdistan: In the Shadow lapse of the World Trade Center on 11 September of History at the Menil Collection in Houston and later contributes to Here Is New York, as as part of FotoFest. The latter exhibition well as to New York September 11, a Magnum tours Europe for eight years with the ad- publication. In late September, she partici- dition of site-specific materials collected pates in the first Festival of Photography in from each exiled Kurdish community. During Pingyao, , with a reinstallation of the this time, she returns to Colombia to pho- exhibition Crossings. In December, she returns tograph ‘teenage assassins’ and also accom- to El Salvador to photograph the reburials in panies Robert Gardner, for the second time, El Mozote on the twentieth anniversary of the to the Baliem Valley to photograph the Dani. massacre.

1997 2002 Life in the ER: Loss of Innocence, her first Becomes a Visiting Fellow at the Graduate video shoot, made with producer Pamela Yates School of Journalism, University of , for Skylight Pictures, focuses on the emer- Berkeley, where she teaches multimedia story- gency room of New Orleans’ Charity Hospital; telling until 2007. The exhibition Intimate the programme, aired on the Learning Channel, Strangers, consisting of selections from receives a National Emmy for cinematogra- Carnival Strippers and Pandora’s Box, opens at phy. publishes Kurdistan: In the Canal de Isabel II in Madrid and later travels Shadow of History. to FOAM in Amsterdam. SUSAN MEISELAS. MEDIATIONS P.10

2003 2007 An installation of her work from the Baliem The Orange Foundation commissions her to doc- Valley called Encounters with the Dani is in- ument girls’ education in Mali. An exhibi- cluded in Strangers: The First ICP Triennial tion of the work is shown at the Bibliothèque of Photography and Video at the International Nationale in Paris. Madrid inmigrante, an ex- Center of Photography, New York. Two books hibition at the Canal de Isabel II, Madrid, of her work are published: Encounters with includes her images of the working lives of the Dani (ICP/Steidl) and a second edition The Masters, the Ecuadorian women’s soccer of Carnival Strippers (Steidl/Whitney), which team. She also photographs in the Democratic includes a CD of the original sound recordings Republic of Congo for the film, The Reckoning, and early interviews with Meiselas. produced by Skylight Pictures about the International Criminal Court. In associa- 2004 tion with the Society, Meiselas begins On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the over- curating the work of Chinese photographers throw of Somoza, she returns to Nicaragua with who document the impact of coal mining on murals of her 1978-79 photographs, which she re- the environment. In November, she returns to installs in the landscape. With Alfred Guzzetti, Northern Iraq to photograph the transformation she co-produces the video Reframing History, of Kurdistan in Northern Iraq. documenting public response to the project. She works with the Acumen Fund, a non-profit global 2008 venture fund, to document their health and water In conjunction with FotoFest, Meiselas in- projects in and . stalls a multimedia installation of the coal project, titled Mined in China, at the 2005 Houston Center of Photography. Aperture and Travels to Portugal to photograph the neigh- ICP republish Nicaragua in a second edition bourhood of Cova da Moura, creating a com- that includes a DVD of both Pictures from a munity installation, parallel to an exhibi- Revolution and Reframing History. Kurdistan: tion, called Mirror, Mirror at the Centro In the Shadow of History is updated and re- Cultural de Belém in Lisbon. An installation printed by the University of Chicago and dis- of Reframing History is included in After tributed to schools and libraries in Northern the Fact: The First Festival of Photography Iraq for the first time. A retrospective in Berlin. She received the Cornell Capa entitled In History is produced with cura- Infinity Award from the International Center tor Kristen Lubben, including three seminal of Photography. Documents projects of social projects: Carnival Strippers, Nicaragua and entrepreneurs in India for the Acumen Fund, a Kurdistan. Meiselas leads initiative with pho- non-profit supporting innovative solutions to tographers of Magnum Photos to form the Magnum tackle poverty. Foundation, and serves as President and act- ing Executive Director until 2016. The Magnum 2006 Foundation champions in-depth, independent Works with Human Rights Watch to document the documentary photography through project sup- migration of Indonesian domestic workers to port for emerging and regional photographers. , which becomes part of a Magnum proj- ect, Disposable People, on contemporary slav- 2009 ery exhibited at the Haywood Gallery, London, Continues work with Acumen Fund to document in- in autumn 2008. The Comunidad de Madrid com- vestments in new projects led by social entre- missions her to photograph Ecuadorian immi- preneurs in India, and Tanzania. Produces grants. An excerpt of her Kurdistan exhibition the video, In Silence, on maternal mortality in is shown at the Gwangju Biennale. Produces a India for Human Rights Watch. Creates a mul- series of portraits in Colombia and of timedia installation Pearl of the Universe fo- women entrepreneurs for The Other Side of War, cusing on Puerto Rican identity, which is shown focusing on the non-profit Women for Women at the Kreyol Factory, Parc de la Villette, International. She is invited to join the fac- Paris. Brings digital exhibition drawn from her ulty of the Masters of Photographic Studies at Kurdistan book to display in the former Iraqi Leiden University, The , where she army intelligence headquarters in the Red pris- teaches until 2012. on of Sulaimaniyah, Northern Iraq. CHRONOLOGY P. 11

2010 together portraits, historical images from The show In History travels to the Hood Museum the Hickey Freeman corporate archive, video as at Dartmouth College. Produces video por- well as audio recollections, all gathered by traits with various partners: Independence, Meiselas to create an immersive environment. focusing on a blind school in Cote d’Ivo- Another collaborative project evolves with ire for the Orange Foundation; Fashion Human 5 Magnum photographers working in Marrakesh Rights, portraying Indian craftswomen in col- where Meiselas produces 20 dirhams for 1 pho- lective production in Gujarat, for the Alba to, an assembly of portraits made in a pop-up Collective; and Hungry in America: A Harvest street studio with women in the spice mar- Out of Reach, about ageing Latino migrant ket. To mark the anniversary of the fall of workers, in collaboration with Homelands President Salvador Allende, she collaborates Productions, for AARP. Meiselas designs with a team of Chilean photographers to re- and co-teaches with Fred Ritchin at NYU, a launch a bilingual multimedia E-book of Chile summer course for the Magnum Foundation in from Within, published by MAPP. Photography & Human Rights, training regional photographers from the global south to docu- 2014 ment social justice issues, which she contin- A continuation of Postcards from America leads ues each summer until 2015. Meiselas to look at what is made in America focusing on industrial sites around Milwaukee, 2011 which was installed at the Milwaukee Museum In May 2011, five members of Magnum Photos of Art in July 2014. A selection of Carnival begin Postcards from America. Each instalment Strippers is acquired by the Museum of Modern of the project initiates a new group of member Art. An expanded installation of The Life of photographers gathering in a different loca- an Image: Molotov Man is shown at Galerie tion across the country to capture the nuances Lelong as part of their group show Reframing of modern life in America. Meiselas partic- History. The Life of an Image installation be- ipates in the inaugural Southwest road trip comes part of the Conflict, Time, Photography launching from Austin, Texas, ending in a pop- show at Tate Modern, London, and is acquired up exhibit in Oakland, California. For the 10th by the National Gallery of Art in Washington anniversary of 9/11 she documents the collec- DC, where it is displayed in the group show tion of recovered objects from the World Trade The Memory of Time. For the first time, an in- Center preserved by the New York State Museum. stallation of akaKurdistan is included in the group show, Women Mobilizing Memory, displayed 2012 in a contemporary gallery in DEPO, Istanbul. For House of Pictures, the second chapter of Postcards from America, which involved 10 2015 Magnum photographers, Meiselas photographs The Ifa Foundation in Germany invites Meiselas daily life at Hickey Freeman, a high-end men’s to contribute unpublished photographs from her clothing factory, in the heart of Rochester, Nicaragua work to complement a book honour- NY. She joins the third chapter, based in ing Ernesto Cardenal, entitled Nicaraguita by Florida, for Swap Shop, focusing on landscapes Steidl/Ifa. For nine months, Meiselas works of campaign headquarters before and after the with Cate Muther of Three Guineas Fund to Presidential election. Meiselas is invited audio record and photograph Shared Dining, a to Abu Dhabi to partner and collaborate on collaborative artwork created by incarcerated a project collecting family photographs with women at York Correctional Institution (YCI), Zayed University students, which becomes a a high security women’s prison in Connecticut. book and exhibition, Lest We Forget, led by The York installation was inspired by Judy Michele Bambling. Chicago’s The Dinner Party. The audio becomes a complement to the exhibition installed at 2013 the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art The initial work from Hickey Freeman inspires at the Brooklyn Museum. Images of Conviction: several return trips and takes on a new form The Construction of Visual Evidence features when installed in a garage at the Look 3 Meiselas’ forensic work from Koreme, Northern Festival of the Photograph in Charlottesville, Iraq at , Paris. She returns to Chile Virginia. 160 Actions to Make a Jacket brought to launch a regional travelling show of Chile SUSAN MEISELAS. MEDIATIONS P.12 from Within, the first public viewing of the work in over a decade. She begins a commis- sion for Multistory, a small arts organiza- tion in the Black Country, UK, and creates a collaborative project with women in refuge, which begins with a team of artists partnering to transform their stories in visual form. Meiselas receives a Guggenheim Fellowship to continue work on Hickey Freeman and her Made in America series.

2016 Her work on A Room of Their Own continues and incorporates the women in refuge collages and interviews, along with photographs Meiselas makes of the personal landscapes of their rooms and the collective space in The Haven, a domestic shelter network. She customizes a Look & Listen app for the third Aperture edi- tion of Nicaragua, which uses the photographs as triggers for video clips from Pictures from a Revolution and Reframing History. Meiselas installs Carrying the Past Forward, contrast- ing her work along the U.S.-Mexico border, interweaving images from Nicaragua and El Salvador with panoramas of border crossing, with excerpts of Kurdistan. In the Shadow of History. In response to the massive migration from and Turkey, she gives a workshop to gather new ‘storybooks’ to integrate in the akaKurdistan wall map of the exhibition. She revisits the El Mozote massacre site, for the 35th anniversary, and documents the on- going exhumations by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology (EAAF) team to recover evidence for future prosecutions. Meiselas steps down as Acting Executive Director of the Magnum Foundation and continues as President.

2017 The book A Room of Their Own launches at the Photographers Gallery and Photo London. TBW publishes Prince Street Girls, along with a Higher Pictures catalogue that accompanies the first show of the work in New York. Meiselas is invited to be a resident at the American Academy of Rome where she collaborates with the Ararat Cultural Center, to create an on- site installation of ‘Storybooks’ by recent Kurdish refugees. The book On the Frontline, edited with Mark Holborn, is released by Thames & Hudson. Susan Meiselas. Mediations, a ret- rospective co-curated by the Fundació Antoni Tàpies and Jeu de Paume opens in Barcelona 10 October. ACTIVITIES P. 13

task of digitising audiovisual materi- His photographic work investigates ACTIVITIES al in Berlin. Once restored, the films controversial places and stories, were projected with commentaries and the geographies of abandon- by the author and in the places ment. His recent work takes the Learning to See where they had been originally form of an extensive photographic recorded. Thus, Spell Reel includes network, which often includes texts, Lecture on the occasion of the open- 16mm black-and-white images, archival material and moving images ing of the exhibition Susan Meiselas. digital material and documents from as multiple and complex forms for Mediations by Eduardo Cadava, the tour made in 2014 to show the examining temporary settlements, lecturer at Princeton University films to Guinean audiences who, corporate development and sites and author of the book Words of for the first time, came into contact of exclusion, border territories and Light: Theses on the Photography with this chapter of their history. geographies of extraction. of History. The lecture will examine Filipa César (1975) is an art- The limited edition will be on Susan Meiselas’s complete work in ist and filmmaker born in Porto, sale at the museum’s bookstore. the form and tone of a letter to the Portugal. She currently lives and Discount for Individual Friends and photographer. works in Berlin. Her films combine Collaborators, and gift for Protective Friends and Sponsors. Duration: 1 h. | Date: Tuesday documentary format with a subjec- 10 October 2017, at 19.00 h. | tive perspective, and revolve around Author: Xavier Ribas. | Duration: 1 h. Admission: Free. the relations between history, | Date: Thursday 16 November 2017, memory, image and narrative. Her 19.30 h. | Admission: Free. work has been shown extensively in individual and collective exhibi- Discussion between Susan Presentation of 1968, tions, biennials and film festivals, Meiselas, Guevara Namer and el fuego de las ideas, including the recent edition of the Carles Guerra by Marcelo Brodsky Berlinale. The screening will conclude with Discussion between the photog- Presentation of the book in the a discussion between Filipa César rapher Susan Meiselas, the Syrian presence of the author, Marcelo and Carles Guerra, director of the artist of Kurdish origin Guevara Brodsky, and Xavier Antich, philoso- Namer and Carles Guerra, direc- Fundació. pher and Professor of Aesthetics at tor of the Fundació and co-curator Author: Filipa César. | Duration: 96 the Universitat de Girona and presi- of the exhibition Susan Meiselas. min. | Date: Thursday 9 November dent of the Board of Trustees of the Mediations. 2017, 19.00 h. | Admission: Free. Fundació Antoni Tàpies. Duration: 1 h. | Date: Wednesday The project 1968, el fuego de 11 October 2017, at 18.00 h. | las ideas consists of hand-drawn Admission: Free. Presentation of It Would interventions on 39 archive images Never Be Quite the Same representing the student-worker Again, by Xavier Ribas mobilisations that took place in Spell Reel, 2017, various parts of the world in the by Filipa César This edition, which turns into a late 1960s. book a well-known series of pho- Marcelo Brodsky (1954) is an Filipa César’s film comes from a tographs by Xavier Ribas, has been artist, photographer and human collaborative research project with produced by the Fundació Antoni rights activist. He currently lives and Guinean filmmakers Sana na N’Hada Tàpies. Presentation by its author, works in Buenos Aires, Argentina. and Flora Gomes. After study- Xavier Ribas, Rosa Lleó, curator, During his exile in Barcelona follow- ing cinema in Cuba, N’Hada and and Carles Guerra, director of the ing the military coup that took place Gomes initiated an investigation, Fundació. in his country in 1976, he studied through the camera, into the fight Xavier Ribas (1960) is a photog- Economics at the Universitat de for independence in Guinea-Bissau rapher and lecturer at the University Barcelona. Manel Esclusa was (1963–74). Most of these revolution- of Brighton and the Universitat one of his references at the Centre ary films were lost and those surviv- Politècnica de València. He stud- Internacional de Fotografia, where ing were little known and at risk of ied Social Anthropology at the he studied. disappearing. For this reason, César, Universitat de Barcelona and Duration: 1 h. | Date: Wednesday together with Arsenal – Institute for Documentary Photography at the 22 November 2017, 19.00 h. | Film and Video Art – undertook the Newport School of Art and Design. Admission: Free. SUSAN MEISELAS. MEDIATIONS P.14

Reading Kurdistan Duration: 1 h 30 min. | Date: GUEVARA NAMER: Thursday 26 October 2017, 18.00 ARTIST IN RESIDENCE The photographer Guevara Namer h | Admission: Free. | Limited will offer us a performative reading places. Pre-registration: re- On the occasion of the exhibition of the life stories that the public can [email protected]. Susan Meiselas. Mediations, the find gathered in the archive on the Fundació Antoni Tàpies has invited Kurdish community dispersed in the the Syrian artist of Kurdish origin, world. This archive, titled akaKurdis- Guevara Namer, to become an tan, has been produced by the artist CINEMA CYCLE WITH artist-in-residence. Guevara Namer GUEVARA NAMER: Susan Meiselas and members of the is a photographer and documen- Kurdish community.. The readings of tary filmmaker. The purpose of the Guevara Namer will deliver a poly- residence is to invite an artist in the Citizen With A Movie Camera phonic account of the exile of the specific context of Barcelona and (video series), 2012 Kurdish community. the Fundació to establish a dia- Duration: 1 h 30 min. | Date: Friday logue between her artistic practice During the war, YouTube became 20 October 2017, 19.00 h. | Venue: and that of the current exhibition. an alternative communication Fundació Antoni Tàpies. | Admission: Guevara Namer will be one of the platform for Syrians outside the Free. | Language: English. mediators of the akaKurdistan work- constraints of local and interna- shop led by Susan Meiselas. She will tional media. This is a selection also conduct the activity Reading of videos made by Syrians for Kurdistan and will collaborate with Open Projects: Syrians. Warning: some scenes, the education department by or- Susan Meiselas. Mediations dialogue and images may hurt ganising one of the Open Projects the sensitivity of the viewers. activities. Moreover, the Fundació Invitation to the presentation of will be showing her filmMorning the exhibition Susan Meiselas. Authors: Osama Burhan, Ahmad Fears, Night Chants, 2012, awarded Mediations for secondary school Dawn, Diana Eljeiroudi, Guevara the IDFA Amsterdam Documentary and adult education teachers and Namer, Orwa Nyrabia and Zaher Film Festival. university lecturers. Omareen | Duration: 70 min. | The residency is developed within The work of Susan Meiselas Date: Friday 27 October 2017, the framework of the European Project (Baltimore, 1948) is inscribed in 19.00 h. | Admission: Free. 4Cs: From Conflict to Conviviality the recent history of documentary through Creativity and Culture. photography. In order to explore the potential of her work and the possi- Morning Fears, bility of developing educational proj- Night Chants, 2013 akaKurdistan workshop ects inspired by it, we invite you to a presentation given by the education akaKurdistan compiles a collection department of the museum and the A young Syrian woman does not of stories and photographs from the photographer Guevara Namer, cur- share the beliefs of her parents. diaspora of the Kurdish community. rently on a residency at the Fundació. Being a young woman, her par- Coinciding with the exhibition A graduate in photography and ents do not allow her to leave Susan Meiselas. Mediations at the drama studies, Namer has extensive home, much less participate Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, experience in educational projects in activities against the Syrian Susan Meiselas is running a work- aimed at young photographers in regime. Nevertheless, she reb- shop for the Kurdish community Syria as well as directing documen- els, writing and singing protest of Catalonia, working closely with taries. She currently resides in Berlin songs in secret, hoping they will artists Guevara Namer and Mireia where she is part of DOX BOX General encourage others to think and Sallarès. For five days, members of Assembly, support organization for believe in a better future and the Kurdish community are invited documentary filmmakers. greater freedom. to participate in the workshop and Following the presentation, the Author: Guevara Namer. | contribute with life stories that are museum offers its mediation to cen- Duration: 39 min. | Date: Friday incorporated into the map. tres interested in the development of 3 November 2017, 19.00 h. | Dates: from Saturday 30 September educational projects in the classroom. Admission: Free. to Wednesday 4 October 2017, from Once completed, these projects will 10.00 to 18.00 h. be presented publicly in the museum. ACTIVITIES P. 15

publisher, and two buildings by Life on a border, 2015 OTHER ACTIVITIES the same architect that are closely related: the Palau Montaner, now Thousands of people share the home to the Spanish Government same fate under the tarpaulins Presentation of Delegation in Catalonia, and the of refugee camps in Kobanê La razón estética, Casa Thomas, now the Cubiñá de- and Shingal. Kurdish filmmaker by Chantal Maillard signer furniture store. Bahman Ghobadi has given camcorders to eight children Duration: 2 h. | Dates: Saturdays The collective consciousness of who, through their individual 7 October, 4 November and 2 our societies and their symbolic perspectives, explain how they December 2017, 11.00 h. | Meeting universe is always accompanied live in the camps. point: Fundació Antoni Tàpies. | by certain categories of sensitivity, Price: 7 €. Free for young people up Author: Bahman Ghobadi. | which vary from one era to another to 16 years old and Friends of the Duration: 73 min. | Date: Friday and from which arise as many ways Fundació Antoni Tàpies. | Limited 10 November 2017, 19.00 h. | of understanding the world. places. Pre-registration 10 days Admission: Free. An education in sensitivity is prior to the date of the itinerary: now more indispensable than [email protected]. ever. Politics is not the preroga- tive of parties or groups, but of individuals. And if those who Approximations govern – whether they are part of the demos. or hold the economic Guided tour of the Susan Meiselas. power, or simply power – cannot Mediations and Antoni Tàpies. learn from each other, then they Objects exhibitions. can hardly rule. To govern we must know what we are and who we are Duration: 1 h and 15 min. | beyond the character we represent. Dates: every Saturday, 17.00 h. | Every well-constructed morality Admission: Free with entrance requires an extra-moral foundation ticket to the museum. | No reserva- and this has to do with self-knowl- tion required. Limited places. edge, something that can only be achieved by observing one’s mind. Aesthetic reason is certainly a pro- FLOW Series posal for embattled times. Whether or not it is feasible will depend on Flow Series presents a cycle of six the efforts we make to ensure that meetings bringing together artists this education takes place. from around the world and repre- sentatives of the local and interna- Duration: 1 h. | Date: Monday 16 tional art scene. October 2017, 19.00 h. | Admission: In this last session of the year, Free. | Activity in collaboration with the British artist Marvin Gaye Galaxia Gutenberg. Chetwynd will talk with Marcel·lí Antúnez, known for his contribu- tions to the field of performance La Montaner i Simon. and theater. A publishing house Duration: 1 h. | Date: Wednesday with history 8 November 2017, 19.30 h. | An itinerary that aims to present Admission: Free. | Limited places. the history of the old Montaner Pre-registration: activitats@ i Simon publishing house, by ftapies.com. the modernist architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner, through a visit to the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, former headquarters of the WWW.FUNDACIOTAPIES.ORG No.8

FUNDACIÓ ANTONI TÀPIES LEVEL -1 LEVEL 1 SUSAN MEISELAS AT LA BONNE, CENTRE DE CULTURA DE DONES FRANCESCA AUDITORIUM BONNEMAISON

The Fundació Anto- ni Tàpies presents

Pa ndora's Box Tàpies wishes to cre- Molotov Man

El Salvador ate a specific space

Carnival Strippers 44 Irving to discuss the repre- Prince Street sentation of gender Street violence using the RECEPTION Girls Porch SHOP Portraits material collected in Meiselas’s photo- LOCKERS graphic series.

Institutional sponsors Organised by

In collaboration with

This exhibition has been co-produced by the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, and the Jeu de Paume, Paris. | Cover: Self-portrait, 44 Irving Street, Cambridge MA, 1971. Collection of the artist. | B 23475-2017.