La feria de las Flores. Núria Güell

The veiled criticality of art under repressive regimes, generally manifesting as allegory or symbolism, needs no explanation for those who share that repression, but audiences outside that policed universe will need a study guide 

Martha Rosler

Núria Güell sees her role as an artist as a confrontation with the social and political context in which she presents her projects. Through her work she investigates, in a very instinctive and analytical way, the limits imposed by the institutions and normalised by power. She undertakes her projects questioning the contradictions, the exploitations and the exclusions through which such power is exercised and maintained. 

The video "The flower fair", produced between 2015 and 2016, presents a series of guided tours of works by Fernando Botero conserved in the Antioquia Museum in Medellín. Its protagonists are some atypical guides: young girls aged between 12 and 17, and victims of sexual exploitation.

Invited by the Antioquia Museum to undertake a project on violence against women’s bodies, Núria Güell investigates the context and focuses on a business that was on the increase at the time: the sale of young virgins by pimps to clients, mainly foreigners, who pay to abuse the young girls.

In recent decades, Medellín has promoted a transformation in order to position itself as a destination for cultural tourism. Within this plan, the Antioquia Museum plays a key role in achieving this, given the value of its collection and the generous donation of works and resources by Fernando Botero, an iconic figure in Colombian art. However, in parallel to the boom in cultural tourism, there is growing sexual tourism involving foreign predators who come to the city looking for young virgins, which local criminals offered through catalogues with photos, ages and prices. In another part of the same project, Güell contracts an undercover agent to pass himself off as a potential client looking for paid sex with underage virgins. An action which reveals the abundant offer and the ease in obtaining this.

To produce this video, the artist worked with an association that provides assistance to victims of such abuse. She entered into dialogue with them and suggested they guide visitors to the museum, commenting on and explaining the works of Botero. The interpretations of these guides link what can be seen in the works with the experiences they have endured. Their readings are distinct from the supposed scientific objectivity of the history of art and the narratives we expect from cultural mediation in museums.  Nonetheless, their contributions do not seem improbable, given that many of Botero’s paintings clearly reveal a sexist and patriarchal view in which women are clearly relegated to a status that is secondary to that of men.

The work of Núria Güell highlights the importance of questioning the limits of what we assume to be normalised through education or context. She urges the contribution of new narratives which include voices that are silenced and distanced from the art audience. How can we listen to those who cannot speak? What is the role of the museum in its function to safeguard, but also to promote, culture? How decisive is the position (gender, racial, economic, etc.) from which culture is produced and interpreted? According to the philosopher Pierre Bourdieu, “truly critical thinking must begin with a critique of the economic and social fundaments of such critical thinking”. For this reason, a fundamental part of Núria Güell’s projects originates from work with groups at the risk of exclusion and deeply-rooted local associations, through workshops and permanent dialogue. It is here that the artist formulates her uncomfortable questions, listens and questions that very institutions in which her work circulates.

Núria Güell is convinced that “there cannot be a critical culture without a critique of culture”. From “The flower fair” and several other of her projects emerge other possible interpretations of what we have before us, able not only nor entirely to enrich the history of art, but make the world we live in a little more inclusive.

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