Galerie Claude Lemand

Barcelona. Museum of Prohibited Art - ZOULIKHA BOUABDELLAH.

Joséphine Bindé, Beaux-Arts Magazine, October 26, 2023

First-ever museum ded­i­cated to cen­sored works opens in Barcelona.

Rebellious spirits will feel like fish in water! This October 26, a new museum with a fas­ci­nating con­cept opens its doors in Barcelona. Named “Mu­seum of Forbidden Art” (“Museu de l’art pro­hibit” in Catalan), this unprece­dented place brings together nearly 200 works of art having the common point of having been cen­sored in the name of reli­gion, morality or for polit­ical rea­sons. A col­lec­tion started five years ago by its founder, the Spanish jour­nalist and busi­nessman Tatxo Benet, who financed it entirely out of his own pocket.

If it does not deal with the theme throughout the his­tory of art (almost all the works pre­sented date from the 20th and 21st cen­turies), this museum ques­tions pre­cisely the per­sis­tence, and even the resur­gence today, prob­lems of cen­sor­ship and self-cen­sor­ship. Visitors will find iconic pieces there, such as the sul­phurous Piss Christ by Andres Serrano (1987), which con­tinues to ignite the debate on blas­phemy, as well as pho­tographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, famous for his homo­erotic male nudes, for some sado­masochists, from the 1970s–1980s, whose exhi­bi­tion still sys­tem­at­i­cally pro­vokes con­tro­versy.

Also on the pro­gram, a work by the dis­si­dent Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (con­sid­ered too polit­ical by the LEGO com­pany, which refused to provide him with the plastic bricks nec­es­sary for its cre­ation), or the por­trait of the former pres­i­dent of the United States Donald Trump naked and with a tiny penis, which earned the artist Illma Gore threats of law­suit, cau­tious refusals from sev­eral gal­leries and a punch in the face by an activist.

The col­lec­tion also includes a work by Yoshua Okón crit­ical of the McDonald’s restau­rant chain, removed from a gallery in 2014, as well as draw­ings by Guantánamo pris­oners, whose decried exhi­bi­tion in 2017 prompted the US gov­ern­ment to decree that no work should ever leave this intern­ment camp intact.

There is also the instal­la­tion Silence Rouge et Bleu (2008–2014) by the Franco-Algerian artist Zoulikha Bouabdellah, com­bining thirty prayer rugs and as many pairs of stiletto shoes, which was removed in 2015 from an exhi­bi­tion in Clichy-la-Garenne fol­lowing com­plaints from Muslim asso­ci­a­tions. A varied journey that its founder describes as “a tri­umph of freedom of expres­sion” in the era of “cancel cul­ture”.

Museu de l’Art Prohibit, 250 Carrer de la Diputació • 08007 Barcelona
www.museuart­pro­hibit.org