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“ID Project: Jordi Bernadó – Banco Sabadell Art Collection”, at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC)

From 15 June to 4 September 2022, the Oval Room of the National Art Museum of Catalonia (Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya – MNAC) hosts the exhibition “ID Project: Jordi Bernadó. Banco Sabadell Art Collection”, a collection of portraits of fourteen well-known personalities brought together by the answer to the question: “What is your place in the world?”, inviting a reflection on identity through the portraits. These individuals include celebrities, creative individuals, film-makers, politicians, activists… and global standard-bearers in fields such as human rights, feminism, ecology, science, the arts and advocacy for a better future. The fourteen photographs belong to the Banco Sabadell Art Collection.

To carry out this project, the photographer asked fourteen well-known personalities to choose where they wanted to have their photographic portrait taken. It could not be just any place, rather it had to be “their place in the world”. This was one of the conditions. The other was that they had to appear with their back to the camera. Their faces are not visible and, what is more, they occupy a tiny space in the image. The chosen place is what defines the individuals; the landscape is the only clue that the viewer has in relation to the portrait. In this way, ID Project explores the essence of human identity, which supposedly makes us unique.

The portrait subjects are: Jimmy Wales, Stephen Hawking, Ferran Adrià, Rosario Quispe, Pedro Opeka, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Gretchen C. Daily, Nada Al-Ahdal, Woody Allen, Muhammad Yunus, Gao Xingjian, Steven Pinker, Vivian Gornick and Reed Brody.