Claudia Pagès Rabal: Five Defence Towers

Claudia Pagès Rabal’s practice intertwines words, bodies, music, and movement. Five Defence Towers marks Pagès’ first institutional solo exhibition in London and the premiere of a major new moving image commission.

Continuing her exploration along the Silk Road, Pagès’ new commission locates five defence towers built throughout Catalonia’s former borderlands. During the 9th and 10th centuries, European forces established a military buffer zone called the Hispanic March. This delineated the border between their own territories and Al-Andalus – the Arabic name for the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsula from 711–1492. These historic frontiers of legal, economic, political, and cultural power struggle are the starting point for Pagès’ new moving image work, which spans scripted dialogue, choreographed dance, light, and sound.

Shot on a 360-degree camera and within the black box space of a theatre, The Night of Five Defence Towers tells a tale of surveillance, control, settlement, and refuge across five acts. While a central narrator plots a cartography of the surrounding terrain and its historical bearings, four other performers seek shelter at the foot of a tower.

A camera wanders above and below the performers creating pervasive and panoptical viewpoints while also mimicking the verticality and violence of the watchful towers. Dreamlike sequences of dialogue and dance explore questions of national identity, the construction of political ideology, and the associated myths that shape belief systems.

Presented across a large-scale ceiling-mounted LED screen, the installation recalls the form of a Catalan vault – an architectural feature that draws on ancient Islamic building techniques. Five lightboxes display photographs of the towers spotlit at night. Installed around the gallery, they create a fragmented panorama that returns us to the question of how colonial practices of erasure have persisted over time.

Talks and events
As part of the commissioning process, a programme of talks and events has been devised in collaboration with Claudia Pagès Rabal, spanning the duration of her exhibition.

Introduction
Saturday March 29, 11am–12pm
An introduction to Pagès’s commission by Olivia Aherne, Curator and Oscar Abdulla, Assistant Curator.

Reading group
Wednesday 9 April, 7–8.30pm
A reading group led by performingborders, a collectively-run platform exploring the relations between live art, lived experience, and intersectional borders.

Talk
Saturday, May 10, 7–8:30pm
Writer and researcher Laura Lo Presti examines the Mediterranean as a contested cartography where colonial legacies, geopolitical tensions, and the public intimacies of migration (hi)stories intersect.

All events are free to attend, but booking is essential. Please visit chisenhale.eventbrite.co.uk.

We are committed to ensuring our events are accessible for all. Please contact mail@chisenhale.org.uk to discuss any access needs. We will endeavour to meet all requests where possible. Please be advised that requests should be made two weeks in advance of the event.

Biography
Claudia Pagès Rabal lives and works in Barcelona. Selected exhibitions include: Manifesta 15, Barcelona, 2024; Scene I. Making landscape, IVAM, Valencia, 2024; Typo-Topo-Time Aljibe, Sculpture Center, New York, 2023; Uno, CA2M, Madrid, 2023; Banditry, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, 2023; Gerundi Circular, Tabakalera, Donostia, 2022; Some of It Falls from the Belt and Lands on the Walkway Beside the Conveyor, Vleeshal, Middelburg, 2022; Panorama, MACBA, Barcelona, 2022; Rats and Roaches, CAPC, Bordeaux, 2022; and The Living House, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig, 2021. She published her hair in 2020 with Onomatopee, her first novel Més de dues aigües in 2024 with Empúries Narrativa, and will launch a new book with Wendy’s Subway in 2025. Pagès was awarded the Ojo Crítico Visual Arts Award in 2022, and has been artist in residence at Gasworks, London, 2017 and Triangle France, Marseille, 2020.

Five Defence Towers is produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London and within the Call of ”la Caixa” Foundation Support for Creation’24. Production. Commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London and mumok, Vienna, developed in collaboration with Tractora Koop, Bilbao. 

With the support of Hangar, Center for Artistic Production and Research, La Caldera and MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona.

Lead Supporter: The Foundation Foundation.

Headline Supporter: Maria Sukkar.

With additional support from Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and the Chisenhale Gallery Commissions Fund.

With special thanks to our Events Drinks Sponsor: Estrella Damm.

A new associated publication will be published by Chisenhale Gallery, London and mumok, Vienna.

Chisenhale Gallery’s Schools’ Programme 2025 is made possible through the generosity of Goodman Gallery.

The 2025–26 Asymmetry Curatorial Research Fellow is hosted by Chisenhale Gallery.