Spoken Exhibition

Spoken Exhibition is an alternative history of Polish art since 1960, a history that tells about the creation of art institutions, the major exhibitions and the art gestures that have determined the specificity of a post-communist era. However, it is not presented as essay, research or exhibition but rather as a cross between performance art and narrative that is reinterpreted and reread in every new context in which it takes place. In this sense the project is an example of the narrative shift that performance art underwent when it stopped reflecting on the body or time and started approaching the construction of histories, the role of the audience and the dialogue that every performance entails.

Written by a Polish collective consisting of the critics and curators Sebastian Cichocki, Grzegorz Piątek, Jarosław Trybuś and Michał Libera, the project describes itself as an “institutional opera” in which the performance of the “libreto” reflects the dynamics and the identity of each institution. Following performances at WIELS, in Brussels, and at the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, in Moscow, Museo Reina Sofía is taking part in the third phase of Spoken Exhibition . In this phase, a pedagogical process has begun, under the guidance of performing artist Cristina Blanco, in which students of the Master in Performing Arts Practices and Visual Culture, which is hosted by the Museum, interpret the text using a variety of media and languages.