Nitrate. Xavier Ribas

EXTENDED UNTIL MARCH 20, 2016

The photographic exhibition Nitrate by Xavier Ribas represents one of the most visible aspects of the artist's work since 2009. Presented for the first time at MACBA in June 2014 and at Bluecoat in Liverpool from April to July of this year, the photographs of this exhibition taken in Chile, Great Britain, Spain and the United States will be on display until March 6, 2016 in all the rooms of the basement floor, previously dedicated to Interactions, by Javier Vallhonrat. The origin of Xavier Ribas' artistic work stems from his participation in the Tender Puentes project at the Museo Universidad de Navarra, in which he made one of the works included in the exhibition: Geografías concretas (Ceuta and Melilla).

Curated by Carles Guerra, the show is an exhibition organized by the Museo d Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), co-produced with the Museo Universidad de Navarra in collaboration with Bluecoat Liverpool s Centre for the Contemporary Arts, and with the support of Acción Cultural Española and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Since 2009, Xavier Ribas (Barcelona, 1960) has developed his photographic work investigating the natural history of nitrate in Chile in response to the photo album Oficina Alianza y Puerto de Iquique 1900, from the University of Navarra Museum Collection. Nitrate is the result of the investigation of this mineral and the colonial exploitation system carried out by some British companies in the Atacama Desert of Chile, during the second half of the 19th century and until after the First World War. The mineral, once processed, was used as a natural fertilizer or as an ingredient in the manufacture of explosives. This case study brings to the present day the extractive policies practiced for centuries, especially on the South American and African continents.

After two decades of work, Xavier Ribas has built a reputation as a photographer committed to the geographies of abandonment: suburban areas, roadsides where prostitution is practiced or where there are spaces transformed into sanctuaries that identify the site of fatal traffic accidents, borders of all kinds and temporary settlement areas where human presence is the object of expulsion policies. In his project for Tender Puentes, Concrete Geographies (Ceuta and Melilla), Xavier Ribas approaches the representation of the contemporary European landscape from two photographic routes along the border fences of Ceuta and Melilla. In the two photographic grids of 22 and 26 photographs each, the author visualizes the landscape defined by these fences that delimit at the same time a colonial and national border between Spain and Morocco, an economic border between Europe and Africa, a geopolitical border between North and South and a religious border between Christianity and Islam. The border fences of Ceuta and Melilla are to the European landscape of the 21st century what bridges, tunnels and railways were to the landscape of the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, explains the artist.

PUBLICATIONS

XAVIER RIBAS. NITRATE

The exhibition catalog Nitrate. Xavier Ribas has received the 2015 LAUS bronze award, has been selected for the Prix du libre 2015 in Arles, France and was part of the exhibition The best photography books of the year, at the National Library of Spain as a finalist for the best photography book in the framework of PHotoEspaña 2015.

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SPECIFIC GEOGRAPHIES (CEUTA AND MELILLA)

The origin of Nitrate and at the same time a project for the Tender Puentes Collection, Concrete Geographies (Ceuta and Melilla), has its own publication edited by Trama Editorial.

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XAVIER RIBAS, ARTIST

Xavier Ribas (Barcelona, 1960) is a photographer, lecturer at the University of Brighton, and visiting professor at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. He studied Social Anthropology at the University of Barcelona and Documentary Photography at the School of Art and Design in Newport, California. His photographic work investigates controversial sites and histories and geographies of abandonment. Her recent work takes the form of large photographic networks, often including text, archival materials and the moving image, as a way of examining multiple temporary settlements, urban sites of development and social exclusion, border territories, and geographies of extraction.

Ribas has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the Museu d Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS), the Stedelijk Museum, Bluecoat Liverpool, Belfast Exposed, Aperture Gallery, George Eastman House, Lewis Glucksman Gallery, the Centro Huarte de Arte Contemporáneo and the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo. His work is represented in important public and private collections, including MACBA, the Stedelijk Museum Fonds Nacional d Art Contemporain, the Museo Universidad de Navarra, Fotocollectie Universiteit Leiden, the Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporáneo, and the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo. He has received awards, commissions and grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2012-2015), the International Research Network on Photography (2006), Commande Publique du Ministere de la Culture et de la Communication de France, Centre National des Arts Plastiques (2006) and Université de Toulouse II Le Mirail (2007-2008), among others.

His work has been published in several books such as Xavier Ribas (University of Salamanca, 1998), Santuario (Gustavo Gili, 2005), Geografías de hormigón (Ceuta y Melilla Fronteriza Cercas) (Museo Universidad de Navarra, 2012), Geografías concretas (Nomads) (Bside Books, 2012) and Nitrato (MACBA, 2014).

CARLES GUERRA, COMMISSIONER

The curator of the exhibition, Carles Guerra (Amposta, 1965), is an artist, art critic and independent curator. His work revolves around the uses of the image in the fields of education, the media and contemporary art, as well as the cultural politics of post-fordism. He has curated the exhibitions Art and Language in Practice (Fundació Antoni Tapies, 1999), Dejar de hacer una exposición. Perejaume (MACBA, 1999) and After the news. Postmedia documentaries (CCCB, 2003). He has collaborated with different national and international magazines and as editorial advisor of the supplement Culturals of La Vanguardia.

SOME PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE EXHIBITION