Swab Foundation
Through its foundation, Swab Barcelona promotes experimentation, research, and the dissemination of new artistic practices, creating spaces that question and redefine the role of an international art fair.
Through its own programming, it invites collectives, independent spaces, and non-profit emerging projects, exploring new forms of exchange, fostering the ecosocial impact of art, and strengthening networks of solidarity on a global scale.
With public and private support, as well as contributions from the Swab Friends community, the foundation promotes initiatives that expand the reach of the traditional market and explore new economies and discourses for emerging artistic practices. Among these are Polar and Tropic, which builds collaborative networks between Nordic and Southeast Asian spaces; Vortex, focused on exchange between local and Latin American projects; and Solo, which encourages collaboration between self-managed European spaces.
Likewise, the foundation incorporates temporal formats such as performance, video, and conversation into the fair, with Swab Radio as a space for knowledge exchange and an open archive of the ideas that circulate in each edition.
Through its own programme, the Foundation brings together collectives, emerging spaces, and non-profit initiatives to foster the ecosocial impact of art, as well as the development of collaborative structures and networks of solidarity on a global scale.
In each edition of Swab, the Foundation presents exhibitions and time-based formats such as video and performance, both within the fair and across the city, alongside a space for knowledge exchange through Swab Radio, which remains openly accessible throughout the year.
Initiatives and Projects
Public Program
The Public Program expands the curatorial content of each edition, both within the fair and across the city, through gatherings, radio broadcasts, talks, and workshops connected to the different programs, strengthening the links between projects, audiences, and the urban context.
The program functions as a platform for encounter, exchange, and collective creation, generating in each edition a shared archive of materials, conversations, and experiences among all participants.
In collaboration with local projects, the program’s content extends throughout the city, bringing these practices to new audiences and fostering participation, cultural mediation, and community-building around contemporary art.
My First Art Fair (MyFaf)
With the aim of promoting new voices in contemporary art and facilitating their access to the international art fair circuit, the MYFAF program grants three selected galleries a free stand, offering them the opportunity to present their proposals at an international fair for the first time.
Conceived as a space for learning and visibility, the program enables the presentation of projects of high cultural value without the economic pressure associated with conventional circuits. This condition encourages the exploration of experimental proposals aligned with their lines of work, facilitating connections with new audiences, professionals, and collectors.
Initiatives and Projects – Curated Programs
Curated Programs
Curators
Lena Solá (Vòrtex)
Santiago Gasquet (Vòrtex)
Tenthaus (Polar & Tropic)
Bunga Siagian (Polar & Tropic)
JAF (Polar & Tropic)
The Curated programs constitute the central structure of each edition of Swab, giving voice to narratives, formats, and geographies that respond to the urgencies of the present. By combining exhibitions with public programming, these projects shape the discourse of the fair and the relationship between the proposals and their audiences.
From the Swab Foundation, the intention of the curated programs is to explore how the art fair can be useful for emerging practices, fostering the development of infrastructures for collaboration, sustainability, and knowledge exchange.
The Curated Programs of 2025 were: Polar and Tropic, SOLO, and Vórtex.
Polar and Tropic proposes an encounter between artistic collectives from seemingly opposing yet subtly connected geographical and cultural contexts—the Nordic region and Southeast Asia—whose practices are sustained through networks of collaboration and solidarity.
SOLO 2025 unfolds as a constellation of practices developed across six independent art spaces throughout Europe. Starting from the format of the solo exhibition, it explores the boundaries between the personal and the collective, the intimate and the shared, the material and the symbolic.
The Vórtex program presents a space for exchange between emerging projects from Barcelona and Latin America, with the aim of building bridges between two territories whose cultural landscapes have shaped one another, sharing a back-and-forth of resonances, influences, and reinventions.
