Looking Back at Catalonia in Venice: 3 Key Insights from Claudia Pagès Rabal

Earlier this year, the Institut Ramon Llull presented Catalonia in Venice: Claudia Pagès Rabal, Paper Tears at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Curated by Elise Lammer, the installation ran from May 9th to November 22nd at the Docks Cantieri Cucchini in San Pietro di Castello.

Elsie Lammer (left) and Claudia Pagès Rabal (right). Image credit: Nicola Jeffs PR.

At the heart of Paper Tears was an unlikely archive made up of a set of 15th-century paper watermarks preserved in the Museu Molí Paperer de Capellades, in Catalonia. These marks, which were embedded in paper during manufacturing and are visible only when backlit, were historically tied to questions of origin and authenticity. Through laser projections, a sculptural LED screen, and an immersive soundtrack, Pagès Rabal drew these hidden marks out into the open, using them to trace how systems of institutional knowledge and authority have formed over centuries.

The structure of the installation mimicked the tides and waves in Rabal's own work. For example, watermarks projected onto the walls were "activated" by a cast of eclectic characters commenting on them in intuitive registers which moved away from strictly institutional rhetoric. These sometimes mutated into unstable, hybrid forms as the work moved between collective narration and singular voice. This very structure of levels, tides, and flows happily mirrors the underground and surface water networks of Catalonia itself, which acts as the project's conceptual and spatial framework.

Now that the pavilion has closed, we sat down with Pagès Rabal, a Barcelona-based visual artist, performer, and writer to reflect on some of her key insights which go beneath the surface of Paper Tears:

The archive at the core of this project consists of 15th-century watermarks preserved in the Museu Molí Paperer de Capellades. What was it about these particular marks, visible only when backlit, that made them the right vehicle for exploring systems of knowledge and authority?

I have been interested in watermarks because they are not symbols of authority in and of themselves. Unlike stamps, writing, and all other text found on the surface of the paper, watermarks are embedded within the paper itself. 

In recent years, I have been working with forms of addressing time: a time in the gerund, a time in superposition, a discontinuous time. Paper Tears is centered on 15th-century watermarks with motifs from another time: dogs, ships, oxen, carts. These elements, which are only visible on the paper when backlit, have no power or control of their own, but they have served as a support for me to take a journey through time.

The watermarks I’ve chosen date back to the 15th century, a century marked by the expulsion of Jews and Arabs from the Iberian Peninsula and the colonization of the Americas. I probably chose this period to help me cope with the violence we see every day in today’s world. But, as one of the “jesters” in the video says: "May the horrors of the past not dull the present." I didn’t want to address these issues in a moralistic or reactionary way, which is why I chose the watermark as a medium: a margin on the page, a space open enough to play, struggle, and even bring joy. Language and structure are found on the surface of the paper: the written word; the watermark inhabits the paper, circulating almost invisibly, like a signifier without structure.

Paper Tears Installation, Claudia Pagès Rabal, Catalonia in Venice 2026. Courtesy of Institut Ramon Llull. Image credit: Flavio Coddou.

Your practice draws from linguistics, psychoanalysis, and decolonial studies. How do all three of those lenses converge specifically in Paper Tears, given its focus on paper as a medium historically tied to the documentation of ownership and power?

One of the things that interests me about watermarks, and about creating fiction and writing in my work, is that there is always something being negated. It always circles around what hasn’t been said, what isn’t seen.

In “Paper Tears,” I isolate the watermarks by projecting them with lasers, but I am aware of the time period to which they belong, as well as the paper and text they might have contained. At the same time, for me, the watermarks act as a slip of the tongue, and this idea is present throughout the entire work.

The work is structured around a narrative on a waltz, in three acts (watermarks, monologues, and body) in which I wanted to explore the watermarks through free association so I could create temporary games. I wrote the script after showing the watermarks to several people from different generations, using a game where they had to say whatever first came to mind. With this material, I began working on the script alongside the various historical events that occur on specific dates, and wrote four monologues that appear as “free speech moments,” emerging from slips of the tongue and associations, and constantly relating those violent events with issues that are happening right now. As I wrote the script with different perspectives, generations, and geographic locations in mind, I also played with references that make sense to some, a mix of Spanglish that is funny and leads to mistranslations. Each character has their own concerns: unique, particular, and universal in the political and the quantum; the boycott of a supermarket, language and euphemism, how the news and work affect the body... and, at the same time, they are all in dialogue. I worked on the melodies of the parts that are little songs, thinking about the language embedded in the collective, just as songs do. When I thought about who those voices belonged to, and how we had to work on the text and the movement, I realized we could only approach it as jesters. The figure of the jester and the use of humor seemed to me the only starting point from which we could approach this material.

This work is deeply rooted in its context. I see myself as part of a history that has given rise to postmodern forms of colonization, ethnic cleansing, and extreme violence. I believe that in order to speak of solidarity, we must first acknowledge this history, for it is in Europe that fascism originated, and solidarity must begin with ourselves so that we do not allow it to return to power—and, consequently, lead to genocide elsewhere.

Claudia Pagès Rabal, Paper Tears, still image detail, 2026 courtesy of the artist. Image credit: Claudia Pagès Rabal.

The watermarks are described as mutating into unstable and hybrid forms throughout the installation. What guided your decisions about how far to let them drift from their historical origins or was it a more intuitive process?

Six programmed lasers project a collection of 15th-century watermarks and hand-drawn animations. I’ve scanned several historical watermarks that are displayed in the sections we’re discussing, and we make free associations. Then, for the parts where the script turns into monologues, I wanted to experiment with the lasers and create my own rhetorical figures to help integrate the drawing into the monologues. The walls become, in a way, a blackboard: first the figures we associate and discuss, then the drawings that help create a rhetorical figure come to life, turning it into a kind of topological space.

I created all the animations through a very rudimentary and manual process: drawings and scans, like a flip book. For me, it was an instrument of light. And what was once only visible against the light is now represented through light. Like moving graffiti, those strokes never settle.

Whilst the exhibition may have closed, Paper Tears leaves behind a simple idea. It reflects how a mark that you can only see by holding it up to the light can say as much about power and identity as anything written on the surface. In looking at Rabal's work, what stays with you isn't the 15th century but the very reminder that some of the oldest structures of control are still running underneath everything we do today.