The Marvelous Real. The MUSAC Collection at the MOT

The exhibition presents to the Japanese public a number of works which have been chosen from among the more than one thousand six hundred that make up the MUSAC Collection’s holdings and are grouped together under the theme of Lo real maravilloso. Taking its title from a well-known preface to a novel by Alejo Carpentier, the exhibition deals with the problems of today’s world through works that bring together elements of realism and fantasy as tools for developing specific political and social discourses that are inherent in contemporary society.

Using magical realism as a backdrop, it brings together a selection of works displaying a visual language that is common to Spain, Latin America and Japan. The featured works are by artists of these nationalities who use the imaginary of fantasy and, at the same time, play with the perception and treatment of current problems such as identity, communication, the environment and urban transformation in order to devise an approach to a global vision of today’s society with its economic problems and political challenges. By exploring the everyday realm, these representations span several layers of history and culture with the hope of generating knowledge of our reality.

This selection is an effort to explore and reflect on the notions of the marvellous, the supernatural, fantasy, fiction, parody, play and radical imagination as important ingredients of artistic, social and political discourse. While play appears to have pervaded late twentieth-century artistic strategies, imagination, fantasy and fiction have provided meeting places and a framework for thought and action for the urgent political struggles of the present.