Jorge Blasco Gallardo is a researcher, writer and independent curator. He has devoted most of his career to the study of archives and their activations, and everything having to do with the verb “to archive.” He has been a regular advisor to the Territorio Archivo project of the FCAYC (León), curating projects like the Mesuras exhibition document management system. As a teacher at the Elisava University School in Barcelona he has dedicated himself to the didactic development of everything that is not art, but without which it could not exist.

His best known work is the Archive Cultures project in its four editions (Fundació Antoni Tàpies, University of Valencia, University of Salamanca, Regional Government of Castile-Leon) under the titles: Archive Cultures; Memory, Identity and Identification; Collections and New Documents and Representations. He collaborated with the Research Centre of the Picasso Museum (Barcelona) in the analysis of the Brigitte Baer archive. As a researcher, he stands out for his work directing the group Archivo, Arte, Ciencia y Sociedad (Fundació Antoni Tàpies, ESAGED, Museu Picasso). He has recently edited the book Archive for the Virreina Centre de la Imatge, together with Eric Ketelaar, Joan Marie Schwartz and K.J. Rawson. His latest publication is Gabinete Voula Papaioannou, published by the Virreina Centre de la Imatge (Barcelona), Luis Seoane Foundation (A Coruña) and the Photographic Archives of the Benaki Museum (Athens). He has been a member of the scientific committee of the ARCHIVAR- EXPONER symposium organized by the Picasso Museum of Barcelona and the National Art Museum of Catalonia (Barcelona). He currently advises FCAYC (Leon) on the management system dedicated to the Archive-Collection; the Díaz-Caneja Foundation (Palencia) on the new arrangement of the collection in terms of archiving; and he is engaged in the study, exhibition and analysis of the documentation collection on the tattoos of the Fang people of Equatorial Guinea, conserved in the Museum of World Cultures, for the KJCC at NYU (New York).

During his stay at KJCC, Jorge will develop his research on the FANG tattoo archive from the Museu Etnològic i Cultures del Món (Barcelona) in various media: through an installation, public programs and a website that will contain the keywords that accompany the Fang cards.

The Fang archive is historically and conceptually complex. It was created with drawings from the Spanish colony of Guinea during the Franco dictatorship. This means that a lot of tacit narratives are found in its documents, and the narratives they tell are not evident at first look.

To view the website Jorge has developed in conjunction with the exhibition Gabinete Fang as part of his Scholar in Residence program: https://wp.nyu.edu/artsampscience-gabinetefang/

To learn more about KJCC Scholar-in-Residence Jorge Blasco Gallardo’s work, visit this link: https://independentresearcher.academia.edu/jorgeblascogallardo

Past Scholar-in-Residence:
Charles McDonald
Nick Jones