Chus Martínez: “From the outside there is a very great lack of knowledge of Spanish art. “Does not circulate”

From Mata-Hari to sibyl, the trajectory of Chus Martínez (La Coruña, 1972). Because she started as a spy, and from there she went on to become one of the most prestigious and international Spanish art curators, and therefore a detector of trends that are to come. Although she finds the adjective “star commissioner” repugnant, it should be noted that it has been applied to her frequently. After training in Germany and the United States, he soon began an international career in which his work stands out at Documenta in Kassel (one of the most cutting-edge events on the world art scene, held every 5 years) and at the Museum of Art. neighborhood of New York, of which she was chief curator, before beginning, ten years ago, her current work as director of the Art Institute of the Academy of Art and Design in Basel, the Swiss city where she lives. The latter is saying something, since her life takes place wherever things happen at any given moment. From the pre-opening of the Venice Biennale he returned briefly to Basel and then ended up in Madrid, where this interview takes place, and from there he will travel to New York to, among other things, see the Whitney Biennial and have a public conversation with the artist Joan Jonas at MoMA.

He comes to our country quite frequently, since he always has work here. The section that he devised in 2018 for the ARCO fair, focused on the future, was much commented on. She is also in charge of curating the exhibitions of TBA21, Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza’s foundation, at the Thyssen Museum (such as the current one, dedicated to the Filipino-Canadian artist Stephanie Comilang, and the next one, by the French Tabita Rezaire, which will open in October), and has recently written the text for the opening exhibition of the second space of the Barcelona gallery Mayoral, dedicated to more contemporary art. Jordi Mayoral, co-director of the gallery, highlights her generosity: “For us it is a luxury and a privilege to be able to count on her, who has always been a very generous person.”

But she seems to reject bombastic words and pretensions to grandeur, something that is reflected in her text for the exhibition, a collective of women artists who work with humble materials. “Historically, art has been thought from and for eternity,” Martínez writes there. “Exhibitions like this point out the adaptive ineptitude of thinking and doing in that direction.”

Do you think then that the classical artists who created with a purpose of eternity were wrong? What is more fruitful than a perishable art?

Nobody is wrong, because each one is the product of an idea or a fantasy, and all fantasies are valid. What I believe is that we have learned to accept that perishable materials are also capable of transmitting an idea of ​​durability or transcendence. That clay does the same as steel, as archeology shows. That of what is durable versus what is perishable comes from the fact that modernity had very binary ideas of the world in general. Everything was divided into large binary blocks that are unproductive today.

Let’s talk about binarism, then. It is true that thinking in binary terms is relatively simple, and that is why it has served us for millennia to explain reality. Do you think we are now ready to go further and think in more complex terms?

I would say philosophically and theoretically no, but practically yes. I believe that practice, as always, is helping us overcome barriers that we are not very prepared for in terms of language and thought. In philosophy there have already been great defenders of non-binaryism, like Spinoza, but no one is reading Spinoza. And in social media, in the news, in newspaper articles, the truth is that complex ideas do not predominate. Simple ideas predominate. In that sense, I have always seen trans people as the astronauts of the 21st century.

Because?

I see them as people who have conquered space were historically talked about, because they are really conquering space, a new space, a new body and a new language through an exercise they do for us. For me they are great pioneers, capable of transmitting with their own bodies an idea that is very complex and that they make a reality for the rest. I mean, I don’t do it with my body, but thanks to the fact that there are people who have the courage to live with that daring, I learn and we all learn. In that sense they are heroes.

When I think of you, I always remember that phrase that Enrique Vila-Matas attributes to you in his book Kassel does not invite logic, about your experience participating in the 2012 Kassel Documenta, in which you worked as a curator. That “Art is not creative or innovative, art does and then you make do.” If we can’t trust art for creativity, for innovation, where do we look for it?