The gallery calls to tell me that I’ve been awarded a prize for my first solo exhibition, which I mounted the previous year. The ceremony is on Tuesday at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art. I have a sore throat and I’m emotionally exhausted after a Christmas of arguments with R. An hour before the award ceremony I get out of bed, put on a white shirt buttoned all the way up and some black jeans. The shirt is semi-transparent and is patterned with tiny black lightning bolts. I keep losing weight. I take the metro there. When I arrive, I find the press there ready for a photocall. A television host is wearing a dress that looks like it’s made of aluminum foil. I stand in a corner like the catering staff. The hall is filled with infinite white tables, elegantly set for the dinner with no one seated at them. They remind me of the story of Goldilocks—I’m an imposter, they’re going to kick me out of the house. I look over at the photographers on a dais with a black backdrop covered in logos. They wait impatiently; no one has stepped up yet. I don’t know any of the few attendees who’ve arrived. A guy as solitary as me stands waiting in one corner. We received the same grant for young emerging artists a couple of years ago. When he had won every grant available in this city he went to a country in northern Europe. We greet each other and he says, “Do you mind sticking with me? I’m feeling lost.”
We go outside to smoke. He smokes, I just pretend to (I don’t know why I can’t refuse this cigarette). He was awarded this prize the previous year, this year he’s a member of the jury. They pay for his flight and a hotel room as big as an apartment—he shows me photos on his mobile. He voted for me.
“Congratulations on the show. Why don’t you apply for the same grant and come up north?”
He looks naturally elegant, not in a phony way, in his white shirt and jacket bought for the occasion. He has a small, already greenish, tattoo over his ear. A revolutionary star. I ask him how he ended up in Barcelona, moving from his home country.
“I’d heard good things about it. I lived in a squat for a few months, and I ended up sleeping on the street. Until P gave me the chance to show my work.”
His art is a commentary on capitalist society, from the outside. It deals with the recession in Spain, politicians’ false promises, the paradoxes and perversions of the neoliberal system.
“That led to MA asking for all the work I had. Soon he had sold it all at various international fairs.”
That night I dream that we do it, him entering me from behind, standing on the white steps of the museum.