Antidotum tarantulae. Blanca Gracia

The CA2M museum is exhibiting, from 9 July to 10 January, this audiovisual installation by the Madrid-born artist Blanca Gracia, which forms part of the museum's collection and was first shown in 2022. It presents a fusion of theatrical performance, animation and sound in order to reflect on the power of language and the voice as a social tool.

Drawing on folklore and popular mythology, the proposal blends imaginary figures and autobiographical elements, inviting visitors to take part in its theatricality. A carnival dance as a festive cultural expression combining ancestral pagan traditions with local folklore, it revives the idea of celebration where vibrant rhythms, costumes, masks and a deep sense of community identity serve as an invitation to let go and break with the restraint imposed by contemporary civic life.

Taking its title from a musical antidote used in southern Italy, particularly in the Apulia region, during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the work was inspired by the remedy used to cure the bite of the tarantula or wolf spider. Popular belief held that the venom caused a temporary madness known as tarantism, and to expel the supposed poison, a continuous dance known as the tarantella was organised as therapy. Musicians played rhythmic melodies designed to accelerate the heart and induce extreme sweating to purify the victim's body. Scholars and scientists of the period thus transcribed and studied these pieces, considering them a medical and spiritual cure.

The work of Blanca Gracia (Madrid, 1989) alludes to mythology to explore pseudo-fictional worlds with which she has developed narratives assimilated into our own contemporaneity. Her production starts from drawing as a technique to advance the language of animation and performance. Her work brings together