Photography and literature dialogue at the MUN with the group exhibition 'Intermedia. Writing the image, creating the word'.

A dialogue between photography and literature stars at Intermedia. Writing the image, creating the wordthe collective exhibition that can be visited until October 23 at the Torre del Museo Universidad de Navarra hall. The works that the Venezuelan collector Patricia Phelps de Cisneros bequeathed to the Museo Universidad de Navarra in 2018 were the driving force that prompted its curators Laura Aizcorbe, Maite Fraile, Dayneris Brito and Víctor Acebrón, graduates of the III promotion of the Master in Curatorial Studies of the Museum to come up with the project, which has the support of the Pablo Palazuelo Foundation.

Specifically, the exhibition takes as a reference some of the photographs that Joan Colom took in the Raval of Barcelona and that were the germ of the book Izas, rabizas y colipoterras, by Camilo José Cela. Following this model, the photographs of José Noguero, Juan Uslé, Enrica Bernardelli, Marta María Pérez Bravo, Vicente de Mello, David Moreno and Mariana Castillo Deball have been a source of inspiration for writers Carlos Bassas, Laura Arnedo and Valeria List and vice versa. Poems by Arnedo and List have given rise to new works by Pérez Bravo, de Mello and Noguero. This Thursday it has been presented to the media with the presence of Noguero, Bassas and Arnedo, the curators and the director of the master, Nieves Acedo.

In the exhibition -the result of the practical work and the knowledge acquired during the postgraduate course, whose Master's Thesis was chosen among the different proposals presented-, both image and written word have the same protagonism and a symbiosis is established between both. This also fulfills Phelps de Cisneros' wish when he donated pieces from his Collection to a university museum: to have them activated and rethought, since in the proposal they acquire a new reading by establishing a relationship with literature.

In the words of the curators, "intermediality implies a mutual influence, a correlation and interaction between various art forms in which there is no hierarchical relationship but one of equality. This means that there is a common space between the different arts, a point of confluence in which information is exchanged and a new discourse is generated. This exhibition allows us to endorse this approach, evidencing the relationship between photography and the written word".

Thus, the public is invited to question itself on several issues related to the visual image and the textual image: what is the relationship between the visual image and the written word? How do they interact? Is the image a type of narrative? Can one look at the text as one looks at a visual work? What are the limits that delimit one manifestation from the other? Who/what demarcates such limits? Are there any?

One of the key lines they emphasize is that "reading is a visual act by exposing the text as a visual object and playing with the direction of reading, typography, shape, size and arrangement of words. In turn, we show that the visual reception of photography is experienced through language: perception goes through the gaze, but the interpretation and endowment of meaning is a verbal process."

For the curatorial team, the main challenge of the exhibition has been to ensure "that literary creations are also works on display, occupying the same space and acquiring the same importance as the visual image. We have opted for a simple museography and mediation elements that help to easily follow the relationship and connections between the works of writers and visual artists".

In this sense, they point out that "the exhibition also had to be accompanied by a catalog that reflected this interplay between word and image. Through a careful and well thought-out design, we believe we have managed to show that bidirectionality and intermediality".