Shu Lea Cheang. SadeX, 2019. Fotograma. Cortesía de la artista
Sade. Freedom or Evil
From May 11st to October 15th, 2023
Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
Montalegre, 5, Barcelona. Spain
The exhibition presents the figure of Donatien Alphonse François de Sade and the influence that his aesthetic, philosophical and political legacy has had on artists and intellectuals from the avant-garde of the early 20th century to the present day.
Sade. Freedom or Evil has been curated by Alyce Mahon, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Cambridge, and Antonio Monegal, Professor of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature.
The exhibition project comprises a prologue, an epilogue and four thematic areas or passions, a term taken from the lexicon of The 120 Days of Sodom: transgressive passions, perverse passions, criminal passions and political passions.
Jean Benoît. Costume element for the performance Exécution du Testament du Marquis de Sade, 1959. Collection Jean-Jacques Plaisance. Courtesy of Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, Paris
The exhibition offers different readings of the legacy of the Marquis de Sade. From the impact that his controversial writings had and still have on creators to how the writer became a cultural icon with a marked presence in mass culture. The enormous cultural production that refers directly or veiledly to Sade is a symptom of the fascination, discomfort and ambivalence that his ideas provoked throughout the 20th century, of his subversive potential and of the extent to which his writings echo even today. In the exhibition we see, then, how this author can provoke shock and scandal, but at the same time be acclaimed as an incardination of freedom without limit.
Paul Chan. Sade for Sade's sake, 2009. Audiovisual installation. Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, New York
Sade. Freedom or Evil looks at how some fundamental figures of the historical avant-garde celebrated the writer —Guillaume Apollinaire, Georges Bataille, Salvador Dalí and Man Ray, among others—, the critical vision of Pier Paolo Pasolini, as well as the reflections of contemporary creators who talk about freedom of expression, the transmutation of gender roles, desire, violence, the institutionalisation of terror or the role of the pornographic imagination in consumer society.
Susan Meiselas. Mistresses Solitaire and Delilah II, The Dressing Room. From Pandora's Box series, New York, 1995. Courtesy of Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos, Paris
We find documents of performances by Jean Benoît and Jean-Jacques Lebel, photographic projects by Marcelo Brodsky, Robert Mapplethorpe, Pierre Molinier and Susan Meiselas, installations by artists such as Laia Abril, Paul Chan, Shu Lea Cheang, Teresa Margolles, Joan Morey and Kara Walker, as well as new productions by Joan Fontcuberta and Domestic Data Streamers, or references to the stage work of Angélica Liddell, Albert Serra and Candela Capitán, and the filming of a fragment of Bernard Noël's Le retour de Sade, a piece directed by Guillem Sánchez García and performed by Clàudia Abellán and Joel Cojal.