The Art of Disquiet

The Museo Reina Sofía joins with the Festival de las Ideas (the Festival of Ideas), a new event which operates under the slogan “Thought Takes to the Streets” and comes into being with the aim of disseminating contemporary theory and, in the process, filling Madrid’s streets, squares and cultural spaces with concepts. In its first edition, which orbits around catharsis, the Museo welcomes a reflective walk around the Collection, led by artist Marina Núñez.

Thus, the tour sees Núñez explore contemporary art and its contradictions, analysing the relationship between art and political commitment and seeking to understand museums as spaces of debate and confrontation, and not just, or not necessarily, in relation to aesthetic contemplation. For much of the public, contemporary art is a source of disquiet, with people claiming they fail to understand it or understand its relationship to the market.

The visit is thus centred on one of the major themes of today’s art and, furthermore, constitutes a core idea in the Festival de las Ideas: the reflection on the subject and its afflictions, both real and imagined. As a result, it speaks about identity understood as performative, about a politically constructed body, about violence in the hegemonic narrations on vulnerable, and wounded, people. 

With unease as the core theme, the artist takes the audience through a selection of works in A Drunken Boat: Eclecticism, Institutionalism and Disobedience in the ‘80s and Apparatus ’92: Can History Be Rewound? with a view to exchanging ideas on the limits and roles of contemporary art.

Curated by philosopher Javier Moscoso, the first edition of the Festival de las Ideas assembles, from 18 to 21 September, some of the salient figures from today’s thinking, such as Byung-Chul Han and Wendy Brown, and opens out to different forms of expression such as music, contemporary art, poetry and theatre.

Marina Núñez is an artist and a lecturer in the Fine Arts Department at the University of Vigo. In her work she summons different, abnormal and monstrous beings that exist on the fringes of or against the canon to reflect upon otherness as an entity characterising the contemporary subject. She has held solo shows at the Museo Lázaro Galdiano (2023), Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (2021), Palacio de la Madraza (2016), Casa de América (2004) and Museo Reina Sofía (1997), among other institutions, and her work is part of the collections of the Museo Reina Sofía, ARTIUM, the FRAC (Fonds régionaux d’art contemporain) in France and the American University (Washington D. C.).