by Akin Oladimeji // Apr. 15, 2025
As a child, I often looked up: at adults, at Christ on the cross in church, the tops of buildings, the clouds. I dreamt of gliding through the air like a bird, wandering in the wild, free to go anywhere in the world. There is a lot of looking up in Claudia Pagès Rabal’s exhibition at the Chisenhale Gallery. The centerpiece is a group of flexible tablet computers configured to form one large screen on the ceiling. To view it, the visitor has to lie down on a bed-like piece of furniture provided by the gallery. It’s not quite the same as looking up at the screen as a child at an outdoor cinema, but something slightly novel, instead.
Claudia Pagès Rabal: ‘Five Defence Towers,’ 2025, installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2025 // Produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London, and commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery and mumok, Vienna, photo by Andy Keate
At a time when art and technology intersect in profound ways, innovative storytelling has taken on new forms. ‘The Night of Five Defence Towers’ stands as a testament to this evolution, employing 360-degree camera technology to immerse audiences in a unique theatrical experience. There are actors on a dark stage in a theater with spotlights trained on them. They play characters, some of whom are inside a tower, others waiting to enter it with the implication that their unnamed town is about to be assailed. Themes such as surveillance and refuge become apparent, underscored by conversation, music and dancing. As the narrative unfolds across five acts, it challenges our understanding of proximity and distance in a world oscillating between protection and peril.
Claudia Pagès Rabal: ‘Five Defence Towers,’ 2025, installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2025 // Produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London, and commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery and mumok, Vienna, photo by Andy Keate
In all the videos, the artist appears as a character. This, in addition to the recurrence of the actors, helps to give the impression of a story being told over the course of one evening. The characters express themes through song and choreographed dance. There are variations of the same song, ‘Capricho Árabe’ by Francisco Tárrega. Tàrrega, originally from Valencia, spent time in Algeria, which is believed to have inspired his arabesque compositions. Pagès Rabal sees a colonial mentality at work in this fusion of musical styles, an othering of Arabic music. I’m not sure about that. New music from another land is inherently “other,” since it’s novel to the listener, so Tàrrega might simply have been reflecting that. Musicians have always borrowed from whatever they encountered, taking an instrument here, a riff there.
Claudia Pagès Rabal: ‘The Night of Vilademàger Tower,’ 2025 // Produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London, and commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery and mumok, Vienna, photo by Andy Keate
Pagès Rabal’s project also intricately charts five defensive structures strategically positioned along the historic borders of Catalonia. In the late 9th and 10th centuries, European powers established the Hispanic March—an essential buffer that delineated their territories from Al Andalus, the term used by the Arabs to refer to the Muslim realm within the Iberian Peninsula from 711 to 1492. She has photographed them at night and placed them in lightboxes on the gallery’s walls. Inscribed in the lightboxes are architectural and topographical drawings, as well as other annotations to trigger conversations. Pagès Rabal visited the towers with her father and noticed that, as tourist attractions, they feature informative displays that narrate history from a specific perspective, representing a slice of Catalan history and its journey towards nationhood. Reflecting on the various panels, she noticed that the towers were all dated based on their initial documentation by colonial powers, disregarding any of their previous histories. This erasure proved deeply problematic for her. It reminds me of an Ibo proverb the acclaimed Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe, referred to in an interview published in The Paris Review: “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”
Claudia Pagès Rabal: ‘The Night of Òdena Tower,’ 2025 // Produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London, and commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery and mumok, Vienna, photo by Andy Keate
The exhibition succeeds at offering an exploration of themes that resonate deeply within our contemporary landscape. The artist blends innovative technology with immersive storytelling and the recurring motif of towers, appearing in still and moving images, presents us with complex narratives of surveillance and refuge, on both an aesthetic and political level. The camera captures the tension between the performers and their environment, challenging us to reconsider our own perspectives on space and control, and serving as a poignant reminder of the tenuous interplay between safety and vulnerability at work in our daily lives.
Exhibition Info
Chisenhale Gallery
Claudia Pagès Rabal: ‘Five Defence Towers’
Exhibition: Feb. 28–May 11, 2025
chisenhale.org.uk
64 Chisenhale Rd, Old Ford, London E3 5RG, UK, click here for map
