The Madrasah of Granada was the first public university in Al-Andalus. Over six hundred years ago, it was a place where science, astronomy, and mathematics were studied; knowledge flowed, transformed, and grew. After the Castilian conquest in 1500, the Madrasah was closed, its library was burned, and the building passed into the hands of the city council. In the 20th century, after passing through private ownership and undergoing several restorations, the space was ceded to the state. Since 2011, the Madraza Palace has served as the main headquarters of the Contemporary Culture Center of the University of Granada, once again becoming a space for the exchange of knowledge six centuries later.
For this exhibition, Teresa Lanceta’s work is showcased in the Madraza of Granada to reflect on what this place was and what it is now. It explores the act of transmitting and sharing knowledge, the various forms of knowing, and how these are ingrained in objects, places, and people. Madraza 1349-2024 presents a constellation of works that focus on this transmission of knowledge, navigating through more than forty years of the artist’s production with a set of pieces in which her hands never work alone.
In addition to being a specialist in the culture of the Moroccan Middle Atlas, Bert Flint was a great friend of the artist. This is why she decided to name one of the pieces in this exhibition in his honor. Bert Flint I – VII (1997 – 1999) is a special work that pays tribute to a significant person in Teresa’s life, someone who taught her everything she knows about Moroccan textiles and marked a turning point in her career. This composition of various textiles begins with a Hambel (a typical Berber fabric) that Bert gave to Teresa. This fabric, according to Teresa’s own words, “marks the path to follow” and guides her hands to create the others that dialogue with it and accompany it. This intuitive approach to understanding and learning from an object implies a non-inherited learning, created from intuition, premonition, and empathy that accompany every cognitive process.
In Cojín I – IV (1997 -1999), Teresa uses a similar approach, working with an existing fabric that stirred deep emotions in her. Creating from the emotions that an object evokes is an act of empathy, seeing weaving as a collaborative process among equals. This approach stretches time and connects the individual with the collective. The original fabric of the cushion interacts with Teresa’s own fabrics, creating a unique form of expression that doesn’t rely on signatures or individual authorship, but rather on mutual recognition
This way of collectivizing her practice leads Teresa to start a series of collaborative works with other agents, taking a further step in her desire to communicate and learn through her practice. Los oficios del Raval (2019-2022) is a joint initiative by Teresa Lanceta, the students and teachers of the Miquel Tarradell Institute, and the Education Department of MACBA. The project is a pedagogical experimentation process that lasted two academic years, during which the artist worked directly with the institute’s students in several phases.
In the first phase, the students focused on the importance of everyday objects that accompany them. Teresa began by talking about a handira that changed her life and invited the students to look among their belongings for objects that held sentimental value and to share these stories with their classmates, thus creating a space for communication. These conversations led to exploring each student’s family memories and the trades their ancestors practiced, revealing several common points. It is noteworthy that in an institute where many nationalities and languages coexist, all students mentioned having ancestors who worked the land.
This phase led to others in which participants worked on their family trees, which were later shared. In her effort to relate objects and context, Teresa invited the students to look for shops in Raval where crafts were still practiced in a workshop setting, such as candle shops, perfumeries, and bookstores, and to investigate their origins and importance to the neighborhood. At this point, a collaboration began with artist, programmer, and digital activist Nicolas Malevé to create an interactive map showing all these investigations and to work with the students on the importance of maps.
Finally, the students themselves were invited to conduct guided tours of Teresa’s exhibition at MACBA, of which this project was an important part. All this information can be seen in the exhibition through a series of videos and a blog that, besides allowing us to navigate the interactive map, compiles the work histories, experiences, resources, and emotions of the participants and their families, revealing the entire process of situated learning and communication.
In Madraza 1349-2024, Teresa Lanceta’s work and the history of the Madraza come together, delving into their memories to create a space for dialogue and negotiation where the exchange of knowledge is central. This knowledge, understood as a form of communication, is manifested through collaborating with objects and deciphering their codes, times, and textures in the tapestries, and by creating networks of collaboration with unexpected agents and shared authorships, as seen in Los oficios del Raval (2019-2022) All these works create a discourse together, scratching at the walls of this historically rich place to think ahead and imagine new ways of transmitting and learning, both in the present and future.