SWAB Barcelona talks in Mediterranean blue

SWAB BARCELONA TALKS IN
MEDITERRANEAN BLUE

Swab Barcelona, announces the dates of its new edition, from October 6 to 9, with a focus on its Mediterranean DNA.

Swab Barcelona announces its 15th edition, which will take place from October 6 to 9, and will be held, once again, at the Italian Pavilion of Montjuïc, welcoming 80 local and international galleries that will showcase the latest trends in contemporary art. The selection of the participating galleries will be in charge of the members of the Selection Committee, this year integrated by curators Omar Lopez Chahoud, Jerome Pantalacci and Domenico de Chirico; and by collectors Giuseppe Casarotto, Marie Elena Angulo and Jose Luis Lorenzo.

Like every edition, the fair presents the hard core of its proposals in the General Program, which brings together international and national galleries, through its From Home initiative, and local ones, through its collaboration with Art Barcelona. On the other hand, Swab continues the subsection of the General Program, Emerging, which presents galleries under five years old in order to be a platform for the discovery of new projects. In this line, and following the inertia launched during the previous edition, Emerging strengthens its LATAM Focus, curated by Santiago Gasquet, co-director of PIEDRAS (Buenos Aires), who will bring to Barcelona the most emerging proposals of the Latin American contemporary scene.

This year, Swab highlights its Mediterranean identity, and presents the Eastern Mediterranean scene, featuring projects from Turkey, Libya, Cyprus, Tunisia and Egypt. This project will be extended in the coming editions, generating dialogue among the territories surrounding our sea, an initiative that seeks to create shared synergies between projects in the region.

Once again, Swab reinforces its special programs Swab Performance and Swab Ephemeral. The first one, curated by Gisela Chillida, will feature the performative acts of four artists, each of them represented by a Barcelona gallery participating in Swab. Following the dynamics established in the previous edition, these performances will take place in the galleries themselves, in order to generate a valuable artistic circuit that goes beyond the fair’s pavilion.

Swab Ephemeral, on the other hand, will present the installation proposals of the edition, curated once again by Caterina Almirall and Margot Cuevas, who will select the works of four artists residing in the city’s creation factories: Hangar, Fabra i Coats and Escocesa.

Among the fair’s regular curated programs is Swab on Paper, the section curated by Carolina Diez-Cascón that explores the possibilities of paper as a media and as a technique. For this new edition, she proposes 5 projects that will discuss the body as a natural element through paper. In line with the above, keeping up with its aim of exploring new exhibition formats, Swab continues with Swab Reading, the fair’s publishing program, which features projects that work on the publication as an artistic object.

Finally, Swab maintains as its central mission the support to the youngest projects through its Swab Seed and MYFAF programs.  The former, the most experimental section of the fair, welcomes projects that break with the traditional concept of the gallery and explore alternative exhibition formats. MYFAF, on the other hand, is positioned as the program for galleries that are just getting started, as it grants the participation of three exhibition spaces that have not yet participated in an art fair.

Swab Barcelona is consolidated as a fair with a human dimension, which seeks to discover new voices of contemporary art, from a sustainable cultural production and always with a gender perspective.

Finally, with the support of ARTLAND, the virtualization platform for artistic content, Swab maintains an online version of the fair in parallel to the on-site event, giving access to its program to the whole world and favoring the international projection of its participants.