Paper Tears
Collateral Event of the 61st Venice Biennale
May 9–November 22, 2026
Paper Tears is an installation of light, sound, choreography, and image conceived as a temporal device by Claudia Pagès Rabal for Catalonia in Venice, organised by the Institut Ramon Llull and curated by Elise Lammer.
At its core lies an archive of paper watermarks preserved at the Museu Molí Paperer of Capellades (Catalonia). From this collection, the artist has selected 15th-century watermarks—drawings visible only against light—which here open a passage between past and present, echoing a time marked by widespread violence and shared distress.
These watermarks emerge from a moment of historical transition, when Mediterranean trade declined, and Atlantic routes expanded, shaping early European modernity and colonial extractive systems. Regions such as Venice and Catalonia played key roles in this shift, which continues to shape our contemporary condition.
For the artist, watermarks act as lapsus. This notion runs through the work. Performers, dressed as contemporary jesters, comment on them with humour while becoming entangled in their own despair. Their thoughts revolve around boycotts, exclusion, exhaustion, and universal violence.
Structured like a waltz, the script makes watermarks, lapsus, and bodies repeat and return in shifting variations. The video, filmed at four springs from an aquifer that has provided water for paper production for centuries, links underground water flows to the hidden presence of watermarks. Shot with a drone from a zenithal view, the screen becomes a moving map and mirrors the water in circulation. The platforms surrounding the installation invite viewers to walk around, stop, and change their points of view.
The Institut Ramon Llull, the public institution responsible for promoting Catalan language and culture internationally, produces and organises the participation of Catalan culture at the Collateral Event of the Venice Biennale since 2009.
Opening preview: May 7, 6pm, RSVP to direccio@llull.cat
Opening times: May 9 to September 27: 11am–7pm; September 29 to November 22: 10am–6pm; closed on Mondays (except on May 11, June 1, September 7, November 16)
Press enquires: Studio Nicola Jeffs, Nicola Jeffs and Arianna Caserta, nj@nicolajeffs.com / ac@nicolajeffs.com
