During the fair, from the opening on October 2 to the closing on October 5, 2025, Swab Radio by Station of Commons functioned as a forum for dialogue between the different spaces of the fair and as a collective sound project for participants in the Polar & Tropic program, forming a sonic community that interwove voices and radio archives from Station of Commons, Lumbung Radio, Swab exhibitors and artists, as well as the local context.
In this way, Swab Radio is presented as a community channel to discuss contemporary art, articulate collective sonic imaginaries and global networks, bringing together artistic agents, exhibitors, and audiences in an ongoing conversation.
POLISH PERSPECTIVES, GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS: Artist on the Move
Independent art spaces from Poland, the United Kingdom, and Spain open their doors to reveal the hidden worlds where experimentation, performance, and emerging voices thrive.
The founders of Galeria Szczur (Poznań), Outhouse Gallery (London), and See You at Satka (Kraków) share unconventional spaces—from basements and former wooden houses to a former public bath—transformed into vibrant laboratories for exhibitions, collaborations, and innovative new media projects. These artist-led initiatives challenge traditional notions of creating, connecting, and supporting talent beyond borders.
SWAB BARCELONA PRESENTS TALKS
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Swab Talks 2025 invites the public into a shared space to reflect on the transformations shaping contemporary art today. At a time marked by economic, social, political, and environmental challenges, the traditional structures of the art world are increasingly being questioned, giving rise to new models that prioritize flexibility, collaboration, and sustainability. These emerging practices open up new conversations about how art is organized, exhibited, and supported, as well as the kinds of relationships that can be established between artists, institutions, audiences, and the market. Through roundtable discussions accompanied by curatorial tours of the fair, Swab Talks creates a platform where these evolving ideas and practices can be explored collectively and connected with projects that actively experiment with new ways of making and sharing art. We present two of the talks from Swab Talks 2025, part of the Polar & Tropic program. These sessions are part of a broader series of conversations that took place during the fair. In total, the program included seven meetings, addressing the evolving practices and structures that shape contemporary art. |
BEYOND THE MARKET: Tokio, Seoul
Participants: INGAHEE (Seoul) and Matter (Tokyo) | Moderated por Laura Peh.
Following the path opened in 2024 by Focus Tokyo–Seoul —a program that allowed us to place the resonances and tensions between both scenes side by side—this roundtable seeks to delve deeper into how the economic and cultural conditions of each context are shaping their artistic landscapes today.
In Seoul, the dynamism of a rapidly expanding market places the scene under the sign of commerciality, while also raising questions about the spaces available for experimentation and risk.
Tokyo, on the other hand, after having played for decades the role of a major power in Asia and globally, now seems to be shifting toward a terrain where the non-commercial once again finds space: independent initiatives, conceptual explorations, and practices that move beyond institutional frameworks.
SOFT GALLERIES: Projects Attuned to the Present
Participants: Anna Rovira (Palmadotze, Els Monjos), Jorge Bravo (EtHall, Hospitalet), Jorge López (Jorge López Galeria, Valencia) | Moderated by Carla Jaria.
This conversation brings together galleries from Swab’s general program that, through their own structures, promote projects that move toward the territorial, the emerging, and the process-based.
These initiatives reflect a desire to expand and diversify the role of the gallery beyond the white cube: accompanying situated processes, collaborating with specific contexts, and adopting more flexible and open formats. Through an engagement with territory —rural spaces, secondary venues, or sustained relationships with artists— these galleries activate new forms of mediation that respond to the current needs of the sector.
SWAB BARCELONA 2026
Registrations are now open to take part in Swab Barcelona 2026, the 19th edition, which will be held from October 8 to 11 and, for the first time, will take place at the Palacio Victoria Eugenia.
Apply before May 29, 2026.
In its 19th edition, on the threshold of its twentieth anniversary, Swab expands this line of work, consolidating a model that responds to contemporary trends while seeking new (or old) forms of intersection between art and society.
The new edition reflects on the perception of value in contemporary art, questioning the hegemony of the market-driven narrative and opening the debate to its social, symbolic, and affective dimensions. In this sense, it proposes a line of inquiry that places at the center the value of the relationships between artwork, practice, and context, in both their tangible and intangible aspects.
Swab Barcelona 2026 Programs
OFF-Site, a new program of this edition, emerges from an urgent need to rethink and transform exhibition formats and ways of inhabiting the urban context.
Polar and Tropic remains the main curatorial proposal, articulating both the exhibition project and the public program. Building on its previous edition, it connects independent spaces and collaborative structures from the Nordic region and Southeast Asia, incorporating local initiatives in 2026.
Vortex maintains a dual cohabitation structure: each stand is shared by a Spanish and a Latin American gallery, jointly presenting a project within the fair.
Meanwhile, the General Program brings together galleries and independent spaces within a shared framework, shaping an ecosystem that connects different forms of artistic production, exhibition, and circulation, helping to make innovative practices visible and to generate new connections between artists, agents, and audiences.
Within this context, MYFAF (My First Art Fair) is presented as a non-profit program promoted by the Swab Barcelona Foundation. The program offers three free stands to galleries with less than two years of activity that have not previously participated in any international art fair, thus facilitating their first access to this professional context.
