Luz Broto’s Abrir un agujero permanente (2015): The Cultural Logic of Anti-Institutional Aesthetics
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2023-01-01
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Abstract
Artist Luz Broto bored a 5 cm hole in the MACBA museum’s main façade, an intervention entitled Abrir un agujero permanente (2015), within a temporary exhibition. Broto demanded the hole’s permanence, disputing the venue’s temporary nature and challenging the museum’s bylaws, which exempt it from bestowing permanence to artwork. The artist’s drilling of the façade constituted a destructive strategy to impact the museum’s functioning, resulting in juridical and political consequences. This article reads Broto’s use of destruction and institutional regeneration in relation to Spain’s ‘New Left’ neglect of contemporary art institutions and to the pre-existing fabric of cultural networks more generally.
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Evinson, K (2023). Luz Broto’s Abrir un agujero permanente (2015): The Cultural Logic of Anti-Institutional Aesthetics. Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies, 7(1). pp. 103–129. 10.1080/24741604.2023.2177420 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/32536.
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Katryn Evinson
Katryn Evinson is a scholar of modern and contemporary Iberian visual culture and literature. Her research examines the intersections of art and literature with capitalism, drawing on political theory, cultural theory, and political economy to analyze Spain’s role in global cultural and economic dynamics.
Her first book-length project, Sabotage: The Destructive Making of the Creative Economy in Neoliberal Europe, examines the resurgence of sabotage in Spain from the democratic transition through the long aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Rather than framing artistic sabotage as a purely aesthetic tradition—from the avant-garde to institutional critique—the book situates it within broader historical processes that enabled its return. These include the European Union’s deployment of the contemporary art world to advance the financialization of the economy through tourism and real estate. The book argues that Spain became a testing ground for the European Union’s shift from an industrial to a post-industrial model that promoted culture and creativity as economic drivers. Ultimately, it shows how sabotage, long a symbol of worker struggle, resurfaced in art to contest Spain’s neoliberal restructuring—specifically, the use of culture itself to promote and perpetuate neoliberalism.
In addition to her publications on Spanish cultural and political history, feminism, and environmental issues, she serves on the board of the Asociación de Literatura y Cine Español Siglo XXI (ALCESXXI), co-directs The Communal Hypothesis Research Group, is a research member of the Spanish government-funded project Rhythms of Feminized Labor in Spanish Visual Culture (1936-2022), and is on the advisory board of Revista Re-visiones.
Before coming to Duke, Katryn was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Core Curriculum at Columbia University, where she taught Contemporary Civilization. Her research has been supported by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Public Humanities Grant, Cornell’s Society for the Humanities, and the Fisher Center for Gender and Justice at Hobart & William Smith Colleges.
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