The work of Dora García (Valladolid 1965), one of the most renowned Spanish artists in the international art scene, features a constant game between what is considered to be reality and what appears to be fiction. Through works that adopt performance strategies and belong to the conceptual tradition, she creates situations introducing narratives that alter everyday things, what is believed to be real, and allows the spectators themselves to interpret the situations in their double meaning: the translation and the acting/action.
In Where do characters go when the story is over? Dora García continues to investigate the frontier between reality and fiction, between everyday and extraordinary things, to demonstrate that art can generate realities. This research, which mixes the time of the characters with the real time of the exhibition, also conceals an interest in “ideas related to morality, conduct and rules,” in the artist’s own words. This exhibition originates from the show with the same title that took place in the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporáneo (CGAC) of Santiago de Compostela, curated by Eva González-Sancho, director of Dijon’s FRAC Bourgogne. Incorporating quite a few pieces from the earlier exhibit, Where do characters go when the story is over? posed a challenge for the artist who had to adapt her proposal to the very prestigious art space Index, the independent Swedish institution that cannot be defined as a regular museum or art centre since it works in multi-disciplinary fashion and encompasses works in public spaces as well as live activities.