DÉJÀ VECÚ, WHAT HAS ALREADY BEEN LIVE
2024 / Individual Exhibition / Curated by Andrea Pacheco González / Exhibition design by Diogo Pasarihno Studio / CA2M, Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo
Déjà Vécu, what has already been lived is the artist’s first solo show at a public institution in the Community of Madrid, and bears witness to an intense process of research carried out over the last five years, in which the artist and curator have critically reviewed a series of historical narratives, cultural hierarchies, and collective identity constructs in the Iberian Peninsula. The work of Asunción Molinos Gordo is born of an interest in nature, and in a range of media closely tied to ecology and the organic, including textiles, ceramics and wood. Almost all her artistic outputinvolves research conducted in situ in connection with rural contexts, where, as explained by curator Andrea Pacheco González, “she carries out eclectic field work ranging from microbiology to divination.” Pacheco adds that the group of installations, the majority of which were created specifically for this show, “address the urgency of grasping the fact that history and culture are not fixed or pure entities, but rather are configured out of a myriad of diverse elements that overlap, fuse together and hybridize as naturally as the very chemical and physical processes that sustain life on earth.”
The exhibition, which took form on the second floor of the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in Madrid, was composed of eight installations, many of which were specially conceived for the exhibition.
The eight works featured in the exhibition curated by Andrea Pacheco González were: Frotagge (2024), Mil Leches (2024), Los Antiguos (2024), Sin comienzo ni fin, con lagunas interiores (2024), Omar e Ismael, Ismael y Omar (2024), Sílex (2024), Quórum Sensing (2023), and Dunia, Mulk, Yabarut (2019)
SÍLEX
DUNIA, MULK, YABARUT
FROTAGGE
OMAR E ISMAEL, ISMAEL Y OMAR
MIL LECHES
SIN COMIENZO NI FIN, CON LAGUNAS INTERIORES
QUORUM SENSING
LOS ANTIGUOS
Fotografía: Roberto Ruiz.
INVOCATIONS
Whenever I give my daughter a present, she always asks me to hide it first, so we can play ‘hot and cold.’ For her, and for many of us, the feat of the search is just as important as the act of finding. This is how Andrea and I have approached this project, sharing in the excitement of the quest and the thrill of the find. The collection of images shown below could belong to the chain of messages we’ve sent back and forth through out these years of research and production. It’s an amalgam of places, people, events, historical references, situations, production processes, coincidences, anecdotes and encounters, strung together through serendipity as we’ve played the game of finding that which was hidden.This is why it’s so important in this publication to share the images that have accompanied us along the way, in hopes that they might arouse in others a similar hunger for the search. Every artistic practice begins with contagion. This contagion is followed by a call, an invocation through which one gives a name to that which they want to know. Many words have come up in our search: mutualism, heritage, memory, crossbreeding, diversity, legacy, erasure, sum, loss. Each of these words has led to another: wool, breed, race, scouring, waste water, wall, stone, flint, microorganism, coexistence, al-Andalus... And their echoes have in turn taken us to places as far-flung as the Mantexman wool scouring plant in Mota del Cuervo, the chapel-mosque of San Baudelio in Soria, the wastewater treatment plant in Dubai, the laboratory of the American University of Sharjah, the bridge over the Tagus at Puente del Arzobispo, the Museo Geominero in Madrid, the Royal Library of the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, the Arab walls of Majrit, the Museo de San Isidro in Madrid, the Palomar de la Breña dovecot, the chapel of San Ambrosio, the synagogues of Córdoba and Toledo, Cairo’s City of the Dead, the Shepherd’s House in Tauste, the Arab cistern beneath the Museo de Cáceres, the Albero i Sempere textile factory in Banyeres de Mariola, the Fundación Montenmedio Contemporánea in Vejer de la Frontera, Mutur Beltz in Carranza Valley, Museo Vostell in Malpartida de Cáceres, San Miguel de Fuentidueña, Medina Azahara, and an empty lot in Vallecas.
In these fields, you reap what you sow.