Testimonials from professors who invited Espe Pons to talk about her work in their classes and/or lead workshops in the spring of 2024, during her trips to the US to present her exhibit at the University of Minnesota: Mirrors of Oblivion. The show was created as an itinerant exhibit that can be sent to other institutions. Any institution that decides to show the exhibit could invite Pons, in person or virtually, to lead such activities. For more information, please contact Ofelia Ferrán: ferra007@umn.edu.

"It was an honor and a great pleasure to host Espe Pons at Furman University to speak about her projects and photobooks on memory and landscape with the support of the Furman Humanities Center. After months of preparation and conversations, it was very rewarding to see how the events that we planned came to fruition. The Departments of Art, History and Modern Languages and Literatures were also sponsoring her visit, and she spoke to classes in these departments about her work and met with students. She visited a history class on Europe in the Modern World and an art class on Women and the Arts, in which, after presenting her work, students had the opportunity to ask her questions and engage in conversation to frame her work in a historical and social context. She also met over lunch with a small group of students from the seminar I had taught earlier on historical memory of the Spanish civil war for which I invited her to give a talk over zoom. Espe loves to connect with students and they welcomed the chance to meet her in person to ask her questions and carry out a conversation with her.

On the second day of her visit she gave a lecture with the title “Memory, Landscape, and the Spanish Civil War in the Photography of Espe Pons” which was open to all students and faculty as part of the Cultural Life Program series at Furman. The lecture was so well received that we had an audience of over a hundred people in a packed lecture hall. Even though the lecture was in Spanish with consecutive translation in English, Espe captured the attention of everyone since she communicates clearly and pauses in the right image or sentence to allow time for the audience to reflect. Afterwards, she had students and faculty attend the reception to talk more with her about her work and to buy some of her photobooks.

Personally, it was very rewarding to work with Espe as we organized her visit to Furman, and then to witness first hand the interest that her projects had on not only my students but the university as a whole." 

Lourdes Manyé. Modern Languages and Literatures, Furman University.

 Inviting Espe Pons to campus was incredibly rewarding is so many ways. Mirrors of Oblivion was engaging in its subtle and quiet strength. The topics that can be explored through the exhibit are numerous: the Spanish Civil War and its many legacies of violence today, the exhumations of mass graves in Spain and their place in promoting a culture of memory and human rights, a critical reflection on landscape art and the layered political constitution of social space, visual and aesthetic strategies to reflect the haunting effects of the past in the present, the personal and collective memory of traumatic historical events, and the capacity of art (as well as its limitations) to represent and deal with trauma.

Espe’s activities with the general public and our students during her visits to campus not only increased the impact of her art but demonstrated her keen ability to communicate and engage with all kinds of groups.  In her public presentations of her work, one in Spanish and one in Catalan, Espe was eloquent about what moves her as an artist and the way she creatively works through questions of visual representation and political communication in her projects. The public was riveted by her talks. In the guided tour of her exhibit for our department, everyone, from undergraduate students to graduate students and faculty, was fully engaged and appreciated learning about Espe’s projects in more detail. Finally, in her workshops in two classes, one undergraduate and one graduate, students absolutely loved the creative activity she led on how to create impactful and meaningful narratives with visual images. Espe knew how to design the activity to perfectly match the level of the class and had a natural ability to be inspiring and engaging.

Espe is not only a wonderful artist, but a most effective communicator. Her lectures, tours and workshops left everyone mesmerized and added to the power of her exhibit. Altogether, it was an absolute pleasure, and incredibly rewarding, to host Espe and her exhibit on our campus.

Ofelia Ferrán. Spanish and Portuguese Studies, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.