Connecting through art

It's not easy for any artist to build a ca­reer. The world of art can often be a com­plex place for emerg­ing young tal­ent with­out much of a CV. Un­ti­tled BCN is an arts or­gan­i­sa­tion cre­ated pre­cisely in order to give these young artists their first op­por­tu­nity. Xavier Kaye and Jes­sica Casey de­cided to cre­ate the in­de­pen­dent art venue in Barcelona's Gràcia neigh­bour­hood in 2008, with­out imag­in­ing that the cri­sis was around the cor­ner. Even so, seven years later, not only have they re­sisted, but their pro­ject is grow­ing con­stantly.

Be­cause of their Eng­lish ori­gins, Kaye's and Casey's vi­sion of the artis­tic ex­pe­ri­ence is dif­fer­ent than the local one. Their venue on car­rer Topazi speaks for it­self. It of­fers an open and en­rich­ing vi­sion of the con­nec­tion they es­tab­lished with artists from dif­fer­ent coun­tries: “We work with what we call 'early ca­reer multi-dis­ci­pli­nary artists', which means artists who fin­ished their stud­ies and want to pur­sue a pro­fes­sional artis­tic ca­reer. It's dif­fer­ent than emerg­ing artists, who are al­ready in the cir­cuit,” they point out.

Kaye and Casey fill the venue's agenda with events and ex­hi­bi­tions that bring to­gether Cata­lan and for­eign artists from the UK, the US, and so on: “We don't force any in­ter­ac­tion be­tween them, but we do offer them all the fa­cil­i­ties so they can share their cre­ative worlds,” they say.

Un­ti­tled BCN hosts fes­ti­vals and events, and also has a pro­gramme of­fer­ing for­eign artists the op­por­tu­nity to dis­cover Barcelona's artis­tic land­scape. They have agree­ments with var­i­ous UK uni­ver­si­ties, to whom they pro­pose a range of ac­tiv­i­ties to be done over a five-day stay. The ac­tiv­i­ties are var­ied and dif­fer­ent from the typ­i­cal tourist vis­its, and are de­signed to offer per­son­alised, unique ex­pe­ri­ences. For in­stance, a route through the pub­lic artis­tic land­scape of Barcelona which aims to “tell the his­tory of the city and the his­tory of the coun­try, often com­pletely un­known to them”. The stay is com­pleted by a col­lec­tive ex­hi­bi­tion at Un­ti­tled BCN.

The venue it­self is much more than an ex­hi­bi­tion space. There is a small work­shop which a guest artist can use for a month.

“They re­turn to their coun­tries with to­tally re­newed en­ergy,” they say. The or­gan­i­sa­tion is also very ac­tive in the local artis­tic world. The part­ners co­or­di­nate Tallers Oberts in Gràcia and or­gan­ise the fem­i­nist art fes­ti­val La Di­na­mit­era.

After seven years, the venue is con­stantly evolv­ing and com­ing up with new pro­jects, such as invit­ing UK artists over and of­fer­ing them a cul­tural tour of Em­pordà and Barcelona; an­other pro­ject takes young Cata­lan art stu­dents to the UK and helps them get to know and con­nect with the Eng­lish artis­tic world.

Un­ti­tled BCN started the new sea­son this year with a spe­cial ex­hi­bi­tion, ded­i­cated to the es­tab­lished artist Yago Vil­a­manyà. It is an ex­cep­tion, Kaye ex­plains: ”He is the first artist I knew and he in­flu­enced me enor­mously. Thanks to him I be­came an artist and de­cided to study sculp­ture.”