Rafael Dussan, Simon Cruz, Alberto Ruiz Villar and Lori Goldberg come together in BASPcr Mesa III – Body and Territory, a group exhibition focused on the relationship between body, image, memory and territory.
With Rafael Dussan as the central axis, the exhibition creates a dialogue between practices that approach territory not only as a place, but as something carried through the body, shaped by memory, marked by history and transformed through image.
Within the BASPcr 2025–2026 programme, this third mesa shifts attention towards the current cultural presences moving through Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera: communities, gestures, forms of expression and ways of inhabiting the neighbourhood that often remain outside formal spaces of representation.
Rafael Dussan
Rafael Dussan’s works open the exhibition through a direct confrontation with the body as image, symbol and exposed surface. His figures do not operate as conventional portraits; they appear as charged presences, shaped by religious references, historical tension and a fragile human intensity.
Placed at the beginning of the exhibition, his work establishes the visual and emotional register from which the rest of the project unfolds.
Conceptual Context
Mesa III follows the historical and material focus of Encuentro Material and moves towards the present social and cultural reality of the neighbourhood. The exhibition asks how bodies, communities and cultural practices become visible in a territory, and how certain forms of presence remain outside institutional or artistic recognition.
The presence of Latin American artists in the exhibition is not presented as a closed identity category. It is approached as a meaningful resonance with a visible reality in Barcelona, where Latin American communities form part of everyday life through work, music, food, gathering, celebration and community networks.
The exhibition does not separate migrant communities from the local population as fixed categories. Instead, it understands the neighbourhood as a shared territory crossed by housing pressure, precarious labour, racism, cultural invisibility and unequal access to representation.
Curatorial Axis
The exhibition is structured around the work of Rafael Dussan, whose practice places the body at the centre of symbolic and historical tension. His images open a field where vulnerability, belief, memory and violence are held together without resolution.
Simon Cruz expands this field through a spiritual and ancestral register. His work introduces an interior dimension where body, landscape and memory appear connected to forms of ritual, vision and symbolic continuity.
Alberto Ruiz Villar approaches territory through geometry, stratification and mark-making. His work shifts the question of the body towards the pictorial surface, where traces, layers and tensions become forms of material memory.
Lori Goldberg moves the exhibition towards an abstract and atmospheric understanding of landscape. Her work opens territory as an emotional and symbolic construction, extending the exhibition beyond the figure and into the space of perception.
BASPcr Publication
During Mesa III, BASPcr will publish the second section of its psychogeographic study, dedicated to the current social and political reality of Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera.
This section gathers community dynamics, migrant and neighbourhood associations, urban precarity, access to housing, institutional representation and non-formalized forms of cultural activation. The publication will be presented during the exhibition period and distributed as a tool for visibility, dialogue and debate.
Public Activation
A public activation connected to the exhibition will take place during the opening period. The programme will bring together cultural agents, Latin American associations, artists and researchers in an informal format where art, territory and urban reality can intersect.
A performative activation related to body and territory is currently planned. Full details will be announced once confirmed.
BASPcr 2025–2026
Body and Territory is the third mesa of the BASPcr 2025–2026 seasonal programme. It follows Among Us and Encuentro Material, and precedes Espacio como Ensayo, the final chapter of the cycle.
Through this programme, Matiz Gallery develops BASPcr as a framework for exhibition-making, research, intercultural collaboration and territorial activation in Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera.
For further information, private visits or enquiries about available works, contact Matiz Gallery.