Escenarios de ficción. Ana Esteve Reig
Curated by Semíramis González
January 30–April 23, 2023
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. Madrid, Spain
Press release
The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is presenting Fictional Stages, a solo exhibition by Ana Esteve Reig (born Agres, Alicante, 1986) which focuses on issues such as identity and its construction, the importance of images in this process and the elements that culturally configure our way of being. Fictional Stages is the sixth edition of the Kora exhibition programme, which presents the work of young Spanish women creators at the museum.
In Fictional Stages Esteve Reig reflects on music, the internet, social media and human relations through various audiovisual works in which the protagonists move freely between different identities, aesthetics and realities in an ongoing process of construction. The artist looks at the process of configuring one’s own identity through a focus on different social groups, allowing her to present their realities through moving images.
Three of the audiovisuals are shown in the museum’s first floor exhibition space: The documentary of Delilah (2016); Double Fiction (2021); and Fancams (2022). In addition, a series of three videos made specially for the exhibition are presented in Rooms 19, 20 and 21 of the permanent collection alongside works which inspired the artist, by Peter Paul Rubens, Hendrick ter Brugghen and Willem Kalf.
In The documentary of Delilah Esteve Reig analyses the way our bodies and self-image are transformed in digital spaces and the social media in order to offer an artificial vision of people. She uses Virgolini, a supposedly famous singer invented by creator Dalila Virgolini to present herself before the camera. Between the two they devise a documentary that mixes reality and fiction, revealing how Dalila constructs her alter ego and how Virgolini films a videoclip of one of her songs with the aim of revealing the significant role played by the social media in the construction of contemporary identity.
Film doubles are the protagonists of Double Fiction, a work that includes action scenes performed by women. Until very recently this high-risk profession was almost entirely limited to men, who even acted as doubles for the female characters. In this video the women from Valkiria Stunts, the only female stunt team in Spain, act out scenes in which the double was originally a man, thus championing their presence in the film industry.
The third audiovisual, Fancams, refers to a type of video which emerged with K-pop (Korean pop music) made by fans during concerts and shared afterwards on the social media. Here Esteve Reig shows various young people who meet up at the weekends in order to rehearse and film choreographies that they subsequently post on the internet. Like them, Esteve Reig uses a vertical format but uses a slow-motion camera to introduce a perspective that distances itself from the rapid consumption of videos online.
On display in the galleries of the permanent collection is Dead Time: an essay on waiting and desire, a series of three videos specially created for this exhibition. Inspired by three 17th-century paintings, they portray the so-called “Generation Z” (people born between approximately 1995-and 2005). Rubens’s Venus and Cupid is related here to self-contemplation and today’s selfies, while in Lobby we see a group of friends in one of their bedrooms, spending their time looking at their phones.
In Dreaming, inspired by Esau selling his Birthright by Hendrick ter Brugghen, the artist shows the same young people asleep, in almost the same position in which they were seen during the day. Finally, Still Life brings together the material objects most highly prized in the present day: a computer screen, a keyboard and a mouse, all of which are used to play video games and to access the internet. As in Still Life with a Chinese Bowl, Nautilus Cup and Other Objects by Willem Kalf shown alongside it, Esteve Reig creates a still life but one that concerns emotions, artifice and evasion.
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