Oficina de Arqueología Imaginaria

Curator: Andrea Pacheco González

Artists/curator in residence 2019: Asunción Molinos Gordo, Tomáš Uhnák, Rheim Alkadhi and Isabella Lenzi.

Artists in residence 2021: Asunción Molinos Gordo, Marta Fernández Calvo and Rubén H. Bermúdez

Oficina de Arqueología Imaginaria (Office of Imaginary Archeology) is a multi-form project jointly devised by the Spanish artist Asunción Molinos Gordo and the Chilean curator Andrea Pacheco González, Director of FelipaManuela. Conceived as a space for thought, research and artistic creation, the Office proposes to use archeology and its different interpretation tools as technologies for the critical exploration of memory or, rather, of the official narratives that have been built on the past and its remains, both tangible and intangible. Through different actions that are inscribed in the cultural field, the project aims to generate strategies to resist the anxiety to understand what is to come in order to focus attention on what, apparently, has already gone.

In October 2018, the Oficina de Arqueología Imaginaria had a first activity through a workshop held at La Casa Encendida in Madrid. A group of artists, together with professionals from other disciplines, carried out an exploration of the Lavapiés neighborhood, to trace the “remains” of peasant life among its different layers or social strata. The second edition of the Office was framed within the FelipaManuela Artistic Research Residency Program and had as guests the artists Rheim Alkadhi (Irak)  and Tomáš Uhnák (República Checa)  and the curatorIsabella Lenzi (Brasil). The residency took place between November and December 2019, between the city of Madrid and Guzmán, a town located in the Province of Burgos.