Right Here in Another Place. Within the exhibition cycle “20 Minutes at the Margin”, curated by Bernat Daviu

Víctor Balcells, Andrea Gómez, Will Lee, Daniel Moreno Roldán and Sara Sadik
Curated by Bernat Daviu

Bòlit Pou Rodó
Cycle: 20 MINUTES AT THE MARGIN
13.03.2026 to 06.09.2026

In August 2020, a three-year-old girl riding an inflatable unicorn accidentally disappeared from the beach of a Greek island, carried away by sea currents. A ferry spotted her offshore, holding tightly onto the float, and she was rescued safe and sound. But what if the girl had decided to run away? Who hasn’t, at some point, wished to divert the course of the story they were meant to live?
This cycle, curated by Bernat Daviu (Fonteta, 1985), unfolds across three exhibitions conceived as chapters of a collective novel. The works bring together stories and characters that inhabit the margins: figures who challenge imposed limits, question dominant imaginaries, and assert themselves within de-idealized or dystopian contexts. Fiction becomes a tool for generating escapist and metaphorical narratives that are simultaneously critical of reality, articulating a discourse on identity, resistance, and memory.
“Right Here in Another Place,” at Bòlit Pou Rodó, delves into digital realities that give rise to drifts as well as parallel and alternative narratives. The group exhibition brings together artists who explore the virtual world as a space for identity and political construction through video games, artificial intelligence, and internet cultures. Situated on the blurred boundary between reality and fiction, the works address universal concepts such as emotional fragility, desire, love, and the meaning of life.
Sara Sadik (Bordeaux, 1994) creates coming-of-age narratives through video games featuring stigmatized youth of North African descent. In Khtobtogone, the protagonist’s journey of self-improvement becomes an intimate portrait of emotional fragility and the desire for transformation. In Acedia of Arcadia, Will Lee (Chicago, 1991) reflects on the emptiness a gamer feels after completing all the objectives of a game. Andrea Gómez (Medellín, 1977) explores the periphery of virtual environments in Periferia, where frustrated avatars attempt to cross the limits of the metaverse. Daniel Moreno Roldán (Barcelona, 1990), through his video game asdasd, parodies “bullshit jobs” to reflect on meaningless labor and productivity in the digital age. Straddling documentary, essay, and fiction, Víctor Balcells (Barcelona, 1985) produces videos using artificial intelligence tools. These works present stories that investigate both virtual life and the very technology used to create them.
The three exhibitions in the cycle —“A Game of Creatures,” at Bòlit Rambla; “Right Here in Another Place,” at Bòlit Pou Rodó; and “Maladaptive Daydreaming,” at Bòlit Sant Nicolau— share the most subversive spirit of marginalia. Marginalia —a Latin word meaning “at the margins”— originally referred to a diverse repertoire of written and primarily iconic elements placed in the margins of Western books during the Middle Ages. Beyond serving a clarifying function, they offered scribes a playful or satirical escape from their monotonous task, breaking with the rigidity of the main text.
Twenty minutes is the time the unicorn girl spent missing —or perhaps escaping— at sea. It is also, according to various studies, the average time a visitor spends at an exhibition. The cycle “20 Minutes at the Margin” proposes an immersion into dissonant narratives that open spaces for questioning, displacement, and possibility.