Primal Distance
Primal Distance is an online exhibition and a public programme curated and produced by LOOKING FORWARD in partnership with the City of Barcelona, Sant Andreu Contemporani, and Institut Ramon Llull.
Primal Distance
Online exhibition, published on 15 February 2021
Artists: Camila Cañeque, Felipe García Salazar, Biel Llinàs, Joan Pallé
Curator: Carolina Lio
Assistant curators: Arianna Guidi, Giulia Menegale
"I imagine it in the future, in a context where we won’t be able to leave home any more. People will have a puddle imitating the natural urban and suburban landscape of the past and will water it once a week" Camila Cañeque
A puddle in the middle of the room is an image of paralysis and isolation. Inactivity and seclusion, forced or voluntary, keep us suspended in between questions. Is this solitude too much or not even enough? How much space do we have to live in? How much distance between us?
The four artists in the show have been working with these practices since before the start of COVID-19, and their work has taken on an unexpected relevance. Asocial attitude has never been so popular, but now it has been transformed into social responsibility.
Drawing from the philosophy of Byung-Chul Han and Martin Buber, the diaries and cinema of Derek Jarman, and sci-fi literature, the project defines personal and community relationships starting from a perspective of distance rather than proximity. With artists coming from or working in rural areas of the autonomous community of Catalonia and the Balearic islands, the concept of distance is also articulated in a geographical and political sense, emphasising the ambiguous space of separation that defines and maintains identities.