This presentation of works from the Reina Sofía Museum collection - mostly recent acquisitions - deals with the artistic languages and practices of the period between the late 1990s and 2007, both in the national and international context, with focus on a number of common issues that define the beginning of this century and extends to the present.
The way artists address the effects of globalization and the new geopolitical configurations represents the starting point of this exhibition through the works of Zoe Leonard and Allan Sekula. Another research line looks at the revision of the languages of modernity and their links to colonial processes. In this regard, the proposals by Leonor Antunes, Ines Doujak and Adrià Julià appropriate the images and historical narratives to carry out a critical reading. On the other hand, the nation-state crisis and the strategies of history dramatization are presented as “political fictions” by IbonAranberri and Peter Friedl. A more topical scenario is represented by case studies related to the transformation processes of Barcelona’s industrial outskirts and the gentrification of cities like Madrid in the projects by María Ruido, Patrick Faigenbaum and Manolo Laguillo, among others.
