Erlea Maneros Zabala, 2019/2020

Erlea Maneros Zabala has divided her artistic intervention into two chapters in the Double Museum programme. The temporary exhibition "Norusta" is the result of the first chapter, while the second, which will be launched in 2021, will take place in the permanent exhibition.

The intersection between the spatial, the ethnographic and the artistic of Norusta, the first part of the project, highlights the revision that the Bikoitza Museum program proposes, taking as a starting point the dual singularity of the San Telmo Museoa collection as a museum of society and art collection. Here, the exhibition takes the form of a temporary staging, allowing the sequences to be developed and organized.

Norusta exhibition

In a second section, her work will be inserted into the museum's itinerary, overlapping with the continuous order of the permanent collection, to form the resulting work at the end of this annual cycle. This part will be presented in 2021.

Erlea Maneros Zabala (Bilbao, 1977)

Maneros Zabala analyses the conditions and effects of image production, addressing the contexts generated and the modes of distribution. The issues raised by her work can be found in the academisation of languages of abstraction, the notion of authorship and the relationships established between handicrafts and mass production through the use of mechanical resources in production processes.

Erlea Maneros Zabala (Bilbao, 1977) studied at the Glasgow School of Art and California Institute of the Arts, she lives and works in Joshua Tree, California. Her work has been exhibited in institutions such as Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid), Museo Experimental El Eco (Mexico City), REDCAT (Los Angeles), Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao), CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain (Bordeaux) and Bombas Gens Centre d’Art (Valencia) among others.

She has also had a relationship with the San Telmo Museum, since he participated in the Suturak exhibition (2014) and received in this museum the Gure Artea 2018 award.

Artist chosen for the next edition: Jose Mari Zabala

Following the Double Museum methodology, Maneros Zabala has chosen the artist who will be taking part in the second edition of this programme: Jose Mari Zabala.

Among other reasons Maneros Zabala has chosen Zabala because his contribution to experimental sound and his films and videos link the Basque and American contexts; because his practices have influenced Maneros Zabala’s career, and because José Mari Zabala was a key participant who witnessed the Basque cultural revival in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, that coincide with the period that defined her education.

Erlea also adds “Although the content of the museum collection is a part of my cultural heritage, the San Telmo Museum and the images of its collection were just a distant memory for me. In José Mari Zabala’s case the opposite is true; he has worked extensively with Basque ethnographic images and uses specific objects from the San Telmo collection. An example of this is his design for the first poster of the dance group, Argia, where he was inspired by a motif of a textile funeral piece from the museum. I think that it is really promising that he is revisiting this context and applying his vision and his point of view from a contemporary perspective”.