Does Barcelona Need Manifesta 15?

This year, Manifesta takes place across the metropolitan area of Barcelona, marking one of the most extensive geographical spreads in the biennial’s history. In a city grappling with rising tourism and commercialization, how can major art events empower cultural workers on the city’s periphery? Ahead of the biennial’s opening, Christian Alonso (Director, La Panera, Lleida), Hedwig Fijen (co-founder, Manifesta), Filipa Oliveira (Creative Mediator, Manifesta 15), Quim Packard (Coordinator, Mèdol Art Centre, Tarragona), and Marta Sesé Fuentes (writer and curator) come together to discuss the intended impact of this nomadic biennial.

Christian Alonso The municipality of Barcelona likes big events. This year alone we have The America’s Cup, Formula 1 and they’ve just announced that Barcelona will host Tour de France in 2026. We also have ‘macro festivals’ which have a very powerful, and sometimes negative, impact on Barcelona. The city suffers from poverty, privatization of public space and gentrification. This is why some Barcelonians are suspicious of the impact of events like Manifesta.

Hedwig Fijen Manifesta is not your typical curator or artist exhibition which opens then moves on. In 2019–20, former mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau raised the idea of inviting Manifesta to come to the city but to do something outside its centre, similar to Manifesta 12 in Palermo, which was mostly about reclaiming public space. Tourism and gentrification is a global problem. London and Amsterdam, for example, are completely overrun.

We concluded that to decentralize the city you need to transgress its natural boundaries; these are the Collserola mountains, the two rivers – the Llobregat and Besòs – and the sea.

Filipa Oliveira Gentrification is also happening in Lisbon, where I'm from. Manifesta’s proposal was to find ways to connect the isolated cities in the metropolitan area and connect them to each other, not just the centre. Hedwig met a local journalist who had never visited the Seu d'Ègara church complex in Terrassa, which is one of our venues. Manifesta is giving access to these incredible alternative spaces, including the Tres Xemeneies, a former power station which had never been open to the public. We don't want to bring an international audience of thousands to Barcelona but rather to stimulate the local people.

Marta Sesé I agree with Christian’s concerns as Barcelona is a city that really grows thanks to these major events. For me, the bigger question is, what happens in the periods between these events because they don’t take any responsibility for what happens when they leave. They may provide some rich material context for the agents that take part but usually that’s it.

I’d like to point out that Manifesta has been working in Barcelona for years and has created a decent environment for professionals. It also pays better salaries than some institutions here and provides people who work there with a reference for how they much they should be getting paid.

CA All that can be said is that Manifesta’s future impact remains to be seen, however, if I’m honest, I'm rather sceptical about it making a significant contribution to Barcelona's cultural fabric. Not because of the organizers’ intentions, but because Barcelona faces many problems. Visitors think the city’s cultural scene is solid and vibrant, which might be true for private institutions, but when it comes to public institutions, art in Barcelona is precarious, underfunded and politically controlled.

One example: for months the most important contemporary arts centre in Barcelona, Fabra i Coats, which is managed by Barcelona's municipality, has been running without a director or artistic programme. This is outrageous and the only explanation is politicians’ lack of appreciation for the role of contemporary art in society.

Quim Packard I agree, Christian. One of the positive impacts Manifesta could have would be to convince politicians, journalists, the local population etc. and get them to pay more attention to the art sector. But in Manifesta’s defence, it’s almost impossible to make real infrastructural or policy impact when you’re working from the outside.

MS But there are changes happening. Núvol, a Catalan magazine, is preparing a publication focused on curators which will be published in English for the first time. It shows they are interested in making an impact with international audiences.

HF Manifesta has sometimes been perceived as a UFO flying in from the outside but we never go where we’re not wanted. However, I have never worked in a city where bureaucracy is so huge. At first, specific funds were promised, then they were taken away. Even Palermo was easier to deal with.

But we have done a lot to address the community. We’ve collaborated with Tania Safura Adam on the huge ‘España Negra’ research project, an ongoing archive exploring the depictions and culture of Black people in the Iberian peninsula, and Princeton professor Germán Labrador Méndez has a project about the evolution of cultural democratic rights in Catalonia since the 18th century. But why do you need to wait for Manifesta to do this when all the resources are already here?

QP It’s a good question. I wonder if this was a strategy by politicians who were interested in investing in the arts but needed an excuse like Manifesta to do so?

CA To return to the question: does Barcelona need an event like Manifesta? In my humble opinion, the attempt to decentralize Barcelona’s art scene by focussing only on the metropolitan area is paradoxical. I think it would have been more effective to extend the programme to the rest of Catalonia, to the artists, projects and institutions existing outside Barcelona’s gravitational pull.

HF But this is all down to the political complexity of Catalonia. I think we had three or four elections in the year that we were working on it. Our entire board changed. Cultural councillors changed. I met the mayor once. This complexity is destabilizing for culture.

I think politicians can either use or misuse Manifesta as an incubator for change. As Quim said, if it’s successful, then it is to their benefit. And if it’s a misfit, they blame Manifesta.

MS For me, one of the great challenges in this region is providing decent conditions and support for artists throughout their career. You either have emerging spaces or you have mature venues that show big exhibitions, but there is a desert in between.

There’s a real need to internationalize art here but that’s mostly done by foreign institutions, places like AC/E, Institut Ramon Llull and Hangar do also help. At the same time, I think the audience is not used to seeing exhibitions by foreign artists and penalizes institutions when they show artists they don’t know. If it’s not a big name they just won’t go.

QP I agree with Marta. I studied art and art history and many of my peers have simply stopped working. They may do a few exhibitions when they get out of art school, which has quite a lot of public funding, but then they completely disappear a few years after graduation.

It’s quite difficult for artists to have a sustainable income or any stability because of the way the laws work. It’s completely impossible to be an artist on the side and, for example, be a teacher, which is what happens in many other countries.

I also wanted to touch upon the international versus the local. They’re almost two different artistic careers here. Since moving from Barcelona to Tarragona, I’ve noticed a whole network of people that are in the art world but have nothing to do with the international sector. In Tarragona, the politicians don’t want international artists. The first question they ask is ‘where are you from?’ or even ‘where are your parents from? What town?’ They want local artists, born in Tarragona and working in Tarragona. It blows my mind.

CA In Barcelona, there’s an overproduction of artists and designers. I think it has the second most design schools in the world but how many can make a living? There’s a lack of appreciation of art’s social role in society, so you have super high budget international events and then breadcrumbs for local artists.

But our situation in Lleida is completely different from yours, Quim. Since childhood and since working in my hometown, I have perceived a glorification of international artists and contempt for local creators.. The result is that La Panera, the contemporary arts centre where I’ve been director of since 2022, has only had two big solo exhibitions from local artists in 20 years prior to my arrival.

HF What I’ve experienced in Catalonia is a very commercial focus in the arts scene. You’re only successful, they tell me, if you have a gallery. While in other parts of Europe, there is far more focus on interdisciplinarity, on activism, on social design. Many contemporary artists in Barcelona are focussed on a career that benefits sales but there are other possibilities in one’s practice.

FO Such as Magda Bolumar, who has a piece at Casa Gomis. She has never had a solo exhibition in an institution in Catalonia. She draws every day and she’s almost 90. She has never had an international career but has an important body of work. The question is, how do you pay attention to these other voices that are not in the mainstream art scene?

MS Having lived in both Barcelona and Madrid, I think there’s bigger public infrastructure in the capital for different types of artists. For example, there’s a museum called El Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in Móstoles, an area outside Madrid. Their solo exhibitions are dedicated to artists only in their 30s or 40s. This could also happen at Fabra i Coats but, as Christian said, it’s completely without direction.

CA ‘Zombie’ is the word.

MS Yes, it’s a zombie! Galleries in Madrid have more muscle and it’s very difficult to sell art in Barcelona. Maybe you sell one piece a year. The artists in Madrid are more diverse and this is very different in Catalonia where most of the artists are either Catalan, Valencian or from the Balearics. I think it’s a challenge for curators here not to programme only Catalan artists or artists of a certain generation. At least, in my own curatorial practice, I try to promote dialogue between artists of different ages or origins. I think Manifesta is a good example of this attempt too.

HF At the end of Manifesta in November we are going to critically reflect on whether it worked out as we wanted it to. And remember, we’re not just focussing on contemporary art. There’s ecology, social design and architectural processes too.

Manifesta 15 is on view at various venues in the Barcelona metropolitan area from 8 September until 24 November 2024

_{Main image: The Three Chimneys, Sant Adrià del Besòs. Courtesy: © Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana/Arnau Rovira}