The evolution of experimental practices in mid-20th century Spain is epitomized by Elena Asins (1940-2015), whose visual poetry, music, and experimental spellings broke away from stagnant disciplines. Her work, including Orfeo songs, a poetic suite for three voices and chorus, exists within a framework preserved by the MACA archive, where it continues to inspire new generations of artists and scholars. This collection stands as a landmark in the intersection of language, sound, and form, inviting viewers to engage with text as a living, performative medium rather than a fixed static artifact. The record in MACA documents a moment when poetry and visual art fused into kinetic expressions, challenging conventional boundaries and opening space for multiple interpretations.
In the current exhibition The sound of the wind is a tireless whistle, visitors encounter a performative experience conceived for the first time at the Alicante museum. A free version was designed by the collaborative effort of Bartolomé Ferrando, Laura Tejeda, and Alain Goudard, with the MACA Apron Choir accompanying the performance. The pieces, presented through reading, singing, and instrumental readings, promise a unique live vocal show that blends poetry, music, and stagecraft. The event is scheduled for Saturday, March 4, at 18:30, at the MAC. This presentation showcases how sound and word can be coaxed into new spatial and temporal dimensions, offering audiences a dynamic encounter with contemporary poetry and experimental music. It marks a significant moment in the ongoing dialogue between museum spaces and performative art, inviting spectators to experience poetry as a kinetic form that transcends printed pages.
Symphony of Orpheus songs stands among the most important contributions to experimental poetry in Spain. The project encompasses nineteen visual poems of a musical nature, created on loose sheets and typewritten. These works assemble a series of readable and unreadable elements into pictures formed by letters, exploring the tension between legibility and obliqueness. The pieces arrange sounds and words to compose sentences that carry semantic meaning and literary quality, while alluding to one of the most ancient and dramatic myths: the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, a narrative forever intertwined with love, loss, and transcendence. The exhibition at MACA invites viewers to trace how textual artifacts can become sonic and visual experiences, challenging traditional categories of poetry and art.
Dedicated to Eusebio Sempere
Elena Asins sent this selection of poems to Eusebio Sempere in a folder bearing a note that referenced a mobile sculpture project. The gesture situates Orpheus as a precursor to a broader sculptural exploration tied to Sempere’s practice. Among the preserved specimens, one version is housed at MACA with a count of poems that varies slightly from other iterations. This specimen echoes a late-1960s initiative connected to the IBM company, signaling how art, sculpture, and poetry interweave within industrial and cultural networks of the era. The mobile sculpture concept reflects Asins’s interest in movement, transformation, and the tactile potential of language when placed in a three-dimensional or performative context. It also highlights collaborations that cross disciplines, underscoring a period when artists experimented with how poetry could be embodied, seen, and heard.
Elena Asins began the journey toward geometric abstraction and exploratory practice in the mid-1960s. She joined a circle of artists and writers who pushed beyond conventional media, embracing experimental poetry, unconventional supports, and innovative tagging and writing procedures. Through these methods, works emerged that approached the texture of visual poetry and tangible poetry, revealing a sensitivity to minimal and elemental possibilities within plastic arts. The archive and exhibitions document how Asins’s approach merged language with form, inviting audiences to reconsider what poetry can be when it is not bound to a single mode of presentation. The narrative of her career in these pages reflects a commitment to breaking silos and expanding the expressive range of both words and images, while maintaining a strong ethical and collaborative spirit in the art community.