“The Dream of the Bacchides”, Sergio Roger’s new installation
Barcelona-based artist Sergio Roger returns with a new work that is both deeply symbolic and sensorial. El sueño de las Báquides (The Dream of the Bacchides), his latest installation, will be on view from 25 May to 7 July 2025 at the Hall of Mirrors of the Gran Teatre del Liceu, a venue as majestic as it is evocative. The work serves as a critical reflection on modern disenchantment, classical museum narratives, and the fictional construction of History.
With an aesthetic that merges archaeology, visual poetry and material memory, this installation sits at the intersection of contemporary art and philosophical thought. A project that further cements Roger as one of the most singular and internationally relevant voices in textile and conceptual art today.
Disenchantment of the world: a material critique
Inspired by the concept of “Entzauberung der Welt”, articulated by Romantic poet Friedrich Schiller, Roger questions the Enlightenment’s legacy and its obsession with classifying, measuring and rationalising human experience. This critique takes shape in a scene that evokes a Greco-Roman archaeological site, but through a sensitive, ambiguous and critical lens.
At its centre, a large silver Corinthian capital, crafted in wild silk, stands as a symbol of an idealised past. Surrounding it are ruined columns made of antique linen, invoking the fragility of historical narratives and their tendency to perpetuate Eurocentric and imperialist visions. The tension between the sublime and the ruined — between classical splendour and its decomposition — creates a visual dialectic rich in meaning.
A critical re-reading of museums and archaeology
The installation challenges not only how the past is represented, but also the museological structures inherited from the 19th century. According to Roger, archaeology and Western museography were born in the context of colonialism and European modernity, imposing a hegemonic vision of what is worthy of memory.
In “El sueño de las Báquides”, these structures symbolically collapse: the museum no longer imposes order — it allows space to breathe. The magical, the mythical and the unspoken reclaim their place. It is an invitation to re-enchant the world through contemporary art.
Textile sculpture as artistic language
True to his style, Sergio Roger works with noble materials and antique fabrics, giving shape to a body of work where textile becomes the central language. Each element is carefully selected: linen, silk, wood, stainless steel… They converse in a space that is at once physical and mental, archaeological and dreamlike.
Since graduating from the University of the Arts Berlin (UdK), Roger has exhibited at Rossana Orlandi (Milan), Robilant + Voena (London and Monte Carlo), and has been featured in international media and in CC/magazine, where we explored his unique vision of History as an aesthetic battlefield.
An artist who rewrites the past from the present
With “El sueño de las Báquides”, Sergio Roger reaffirms his position in the European contemporary art scene as an artist who challenges dominant narratives and proposes new ways of looking at the past. His work doesn’t offer answers, but it suggests paths: towards contemplation, towards mystery, towards a renewed sensitivity.
Highly recommended.
(*) Photos courtesy of Sergio Roger.
