Since its origins in the Enlightenment, the museum has functioned as a device for discursive control based on the organisation of space and the supremacy of the gaze. This model contrasts with Baroque cabinets of curiosities, where objects were arranged according to personal and symbolic criteria, without hierarchies or centres, forming rhizomatic structures of knowledge in the Deleuzian sense. The cabinet offered a sensory and intimate experience with the objects, far removed from the classificatory zeal of the Enlightenment. In the 19th century, the museum imposed choreographed routes on the visitor’s body, promoting a linear experience of knowledge. Despite the transformations introduced by the avant-garde, exhibition methods remained anchored in 19th-century logic until the late 1960s.
The figure of the curator, embodied in the figure of Harald Szeemann, bursts onto the scene, breaking with the post- Enlightenment model since the late 1960s: he replaces chronology with curatorial narrative and privileges discursive and affective dimensions. This reactivates the logic of the cabinet and fosters a visual dialogue between works separated in time, questioning historical linearity. The curator disputes the artist’s authorship of the exhibition, imposing a model that lasts until the end of the 20th century. With the rise of decolonial discourses, the figure of the curator mutates into that of the prescriber, reintroducing the historical from a critical perspective and shifting the focus from hegemonic centres to discursive peripheries. At the same time, the museum of contemporary art—which emerged in the 1970s with the promise of promoting creation—reproduces the same structures of authority, now reinforced by spectacular architecture that turns the museum into a work of art in itself, disputing the symbolic value of the pieces and exercising control over what can and cannot happen inside.
This paradox gives rise to a persistent tension between container and content, which is more of an open discussion than a dialogue. In this context, contemporary artistic production often takes an installation-based turn: the works become autonomous worlds that, through exhibition design, are protected from the space that houses them. DISPUTE & PAUSE is situated precisely at this point of friction: the selected artists construct scenographic universes, with structures akin to worldbuilding, which establish a labyrinthine relationship—sometimes in harmony, sometimes in opposition—with the museum. These universes respond to a need for refuge that takes two main forms: on the one hand, escapism through fiction and speculative, intimate glimpses into the past; on the other, a direct confrontation with reality, amplifying traditional aspects or bringing them to a cacophonous saturation point. Thus, this exhibition is configured precisely as a contested space, where the works engage in critical dialogue with the institution that contains them.
DISPUTE & PAUSE is the latest action of Art i Context 2023– 2025, a programme that follows the production processes of a group of young artists from the Valencian context, culminating in a collective exhibition featuring Bella Báguena, Pablo Bolumar, Juan de Dios Morenilla, Marco Henri, Gema Quiles, and Sandra Mar.
