were myths such as those of Paradise, Arcadia, the Golden Age, the Elysian Fields, Atlantis, and later, the medieval fantasy of the Land of Cockaigne. However, all these myths only reflect the longing for an ideal past in which man lived simply, in harmony with nature, without the vices of civilization and are not literary or philosophical constructions of a better society as Plato’s Republic, Thomas More’s Utopia, Tomasso Campanella’s City of the Sun, Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis, or even Rabelais’ Abbey of Thélème, described in Gargantua and Pantagruel. In Plato’s Republic we find the precedents for this desire to elaborate a scheme for an ideal society, which follows a set of rules regarding the function of this society in terms of education, the role of men and women within it, the institutions of property and marriage, among others. More’s Utopia, nevertheless, introduces a new shift insofar as the name of his island (which is derived from the Greek ou (not) and tópos (place) meaning “no place” or “nowhere” ) becomes a literary construct and a genre in its own right, that has spawned countless works, not only in the realm of literature but also art, film, and architecture. Another important aspect of Utopia is irony and the use of specular strategies that reflect the vices and corruption of established systems of government when describing these “perfect” societies, as well as the impossibility of their existence and their untenable character.

But aside from being a genre unto itself, utopia is an intrinsic human ambition; some see it as a vehicle for the intellectual development and progress of humankind; others see in it an unattainable mirage that leaves failure and frustration in its wake. It is in this sense that the rhetoric of utopia has inspired a diversity of ideologies, revolutions and social experiments; some –very few—have been successful, others –the majority—have ultimately failed because in its search for absolute equality among human beings utopia essentially becomes the will to destroy the subject, and this endeavor is inevitably doomed to fail.

This exhibition attempts to examine, through a selection of works from the collection, the diverse instances of utopian thought in a path that departs from visions of Edenic paradise and progressively delves into the intricacies of the failure of utopia when it attempts to materialize, and particularly its darker side, which we have witnessed multiple times during our recent history.

The mention of “dystopia” and “heterotopia” in the exhibition’s title is necessary, since there is a nomenclature related to utopia that classifies its different variants: “eutopias” correspond to the idea of positive utopias; “dystopias” are negative utopias; “heterotopias” are, in Michel Foucault’s, definition, “other places”, real spaces that exist in the material world but that have their own particular codes and rules, such as places of worship, the prison, the museum, the library, the psychiatric hospital, the ship, the cemetery, to only name a few. Each one of the works in this exhibition shows us how the artists address one or other of these variants, engaging in a reflection on the subject and opening up a space for the interpretation of these ideas on behalf of the spectator.