Documents 26. Queer Before Queer

Documentary Archaeologies in Archivo Arkhé

Thursday, 29 June 2023 - 6pm and 7:30pm
Admission

Conversation: free, until full capacity is reached, with prior ticket collection at the Museo’s Ticket Offices or on the Museo Reina Sofía website from 10am on the last working day before the activity. A maximum of 2 per person

Visit to Archivo Arkhé: free, until full capacity is reached, with prior registration via email by writing to actividades.culturales@museoreinasofia.es until 26 June, indicating personal details (name and surname[s])

Capacity

Conversation: 200 people; visit to Archivo Arkhé: 25 people
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
Collaboration
Programme
Inside the framework of
LGBTIAQ+ Programme 2023
Theodore de Bry, Los perros de Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1475-1571) atacando a los indios (The Dogs of Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1475–1571) Attacking the Indians), n.d., Archivo Arkhé
Theodore de Bry, Los perros de Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1475-1571) atacando a los indios (The Dogs of Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1475–1571) Attacking the Indians), n.d., Archivo Arkhé

The Documents programme explores the relationships between art and publishing, addressing subjects that include the effects of archive on narratives of art history, the artist’s book and publishing as an artistic practice. This latest edition includes a conversation on the experience of Archivo Arkhé in recovering the historical memory of LGBT prior to 1969 and a visit to its new premises in Madrid. Founded in 2016 in Bogotá by Halim Badawi and Pedro Felipe Inestrosa, the space compiles publications and documents related chiefly to Latin American art and queer subject matter. Thus, Archivo Arkhé looks to establish itself as a documentation centre which is accessible to researchers interested in one or more of its strands, as well as granting visibility to its holdings via temporary exhibitions.

Institutions of memory — particularly art museums — often situate the dawn of the LGBT movement in the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969. Many of the leading figures (activists, artists, and so on) who drove this movement forward in the 1970s and 1980s are still alive and some of their archives are, either partially or entirely, in institutional or private repositories. Yet what happens with the history of sexual dissidence before this period, in the years stretching from 1869 to 1969? What happened to the archives of leading figures during this era preceding the LGBT movements that made headway? Were they dispersed or destroyed? Has the transformational step towards this world of activists been narrowed to a trace, a fragment? Documents 26. Queer Before Queer. Documentary Archaeologies in Archivo Arkhé seeks to explore these questions in greater depth.

Participants

Halim Badawi is a critic and curator specialised in Colombian and Latin American art from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the artistic director of Archivo Arkhé. He has curated exhibitions for institutions such as the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, the National University of Colombia and the Gilberto Alzate Avendaño Foundation in Bogotá. His most recent publications notably include Historia urgente del arte en Colombia. Dos siglos de arte en el país (Crítica, 2019).

Pedro Felipe Inestrosa is a lawyer who specialises in financial law, and is the executive director, co-founder and a trustee of Archivo Arkhé, dealing with the Foundation’s legal and administrative affairs.


Programme

6pm / Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200

Conversation with Halim Badawi and Pedro Felipe Inestrosa
7:30pm / Archivo Arkhé (C/ Doctor Fourquet, 18)
Visit to Archivo Arkhé