Exhibition and audio-visual project by Aliana and Marhuenda, a fusion of bread and spectacle on George Island. It is on view through September and remains available for visitors in the Negre area of Las Cigarreras until February 25.
Is something moving inside you? This piece traces a journey from Valencia to Documenta in Kassel, Germany, one of the world’s most significant contemporary art events. Along the route, the artists decide to craft a life-size rag doll representing a friend named María, who cannot travel with them. The work explores corporeality, digital culture, and friendship through a rich audio-visual record that spans a decade to two decades. It marks a moment when traditional academic structures begin to loosen their grip, revealing the friction with the professional art market and the challenge of earning a living through art.
Two artists offer a fresh view on this shift, emphasizing the fatigue of long campaigns and the alienating pressures of the global art economy. They foreground the idea of pausing big projects to reflect on what truly sustains creative work. The exhibition gathers a spectrum of sounds to highlight human connections formed through the simple act of carrying a small, light object. This gesture activates memories, keeping visible the importance of contact through images and presence.
“Our commitment to this call is clear: it supports emerging talent and presents new artistic expressions that develop interactive narratives in their most experimental forms. It invites visitors to explore digital art and the use of technology. It also promotes these practices in a reference space like Las Cigarreras,” says José Luis Pérez Pont, director of the Museum Consortium and a juror for the commission.
The authors of the project “Is something wrong with you?” are introduced here for context and understanding.
Sara Aliana and Sara Marhuenda
These two artists have previously examined collectivity and participation, presenting a discourse centered on everyday life, friendship, and shared experiences. In this edition, their collaboration revisits these themes through a personal lens, guiding viewers to navigate emotions such as frustration, individuality, and the sense of detachment that accompanies adolescence as it yields to adult responsibilities amid today’s social constraints. The narrative invites audiences to reflect on how friendship can anchor personal growth while confronting the pressures of modern life.
about black
Negre is an exhibition programming project produced with the support of the Consorci de Museus and staged in the audio-visual room of Caja Blanca at Las Cigarreras. The project aims to showcase, test, and disseminate contemporary artistic practice in audiovisual realms. It highlights new possibilities for artists to work with moving images, sound, and interactive media within a contemporary cultural context. The platform serves as a laboratory for experiments in perception, memory, and communication as they relate to current social life.