A brand new exhibition explores Spanish cinema’s feminine anti-heroes by putting use of color and costume

In her 2023 essay ‘El tiempo de la promesa’ (‘The Time of the Promise’), Catalan thinker Marina Garcés considers how modern society has change into largely frightened of the dedication concerned in promise-making. ‘Guarantees,’ as movie programmers Beatriz Navas Valdés and Natalia Marín Sancho word, ‘understood as gestures that permit us to reclaim each the current and the long run.’ The work, coupled with the query of what primarily defines being an grownup, has subsequently knowledgeable their new exhibit at MoMu in Antwerp: a three-channel audiovisual set up that catalogues a collection of transformative moments in Spanish cinema, highlighting the position of costume and styling in reflecting pivotal scenes in girls’s on display screen lives.

Titled ‘Resolución’, a female phrase in Spanish which means ‘one thing that’s determined’ (a decision), the piece was commissioned along side EUROPALIA ESPAÑA and options 108 actresses in whole, in clips pulled from some 98 movies made by 65 administrators over 9 many years; the teenage Penélope Cruz, in her pink mini gown and espadrilles, from 1992’s Jamón, Jamón seems, likewise the protagonist of Cecilia Bartolome’s 1978 divorce-road journey function, Vámonos, Bárbara. ‘‘Resolución’ explores a defining expertise of maturity: the second of creating choices and taking cost for them, delving into the historical past of Spanish cinema in quest of this emotional environment throughout the many years, to hint how filmmakers and costume designers selected to decorate girls at these key crossroads,’ define the curators.

‘Who may overlook Carmen Maura burning a mattress to interrupt with all the things and depart behind that poisonous relationship? In the event you’re Spanish, these pictures stay in your DNA,’ they proceed, recalling a picture from Pedro Almodóvar’s 1988 breakthrough image, Girls on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Within the scene Maura’s Pepa, just lately deserted by her lover, wears only a vibrant pink and white floral shirt, later swapped out for a go well with jacket in the identical shade. ‘Purple evokes ardour, vengeance, and blood. Cinematically talking, nobody has portrayed ardour, jealousy, and vengeance like Almodóvar has, and he’s finished so with a lightness and humour that’s uniquely his,’ provide Navas Valdés and Marín Sancho, addressing the central position color performs on display screen.