Anatomies del límit 

Elite sportsmen and women are often perceived as almost superhuman figures because of their skill, strength and endurance that allow them to achieve seemingly impossible feats. This superhuman dimension refers us to the monster, a being out of the ordinary who transcends the limits assigned by nature.  

Joan Fontcuberta wonders here whether in high competition, monstrosity is the toll to be paid to take the human body beyond its natural power. Apart from accredited cases of doping and other biochemical subterfuges that have caused scandal in many sporting disciplines, it is certain that other types of undetectable interventions have been tried out under current regulations.  

Based on the experience and documentation provided by photographer Arnau Rovira, who covered the Asian Indoor Games held in Turkmenistan in 2017, Joan Fontcuberta takes as a case study the suspiciously overwhelming success of the local athletes. General disbelief eventually brought to light the POSUBYTOM programme, hitherto kept in total secrecy. An acronym for Performanceokary öndürijilikli sport üçin bäş ýyllyk trawmatologiki optimizasiýa meýilnamasy (‘Five-Year Traumatological Optimisation Plan for High Performance Sport’), this controversial initiative was implemented at the highest levels of government when the capital city of Asgabat was nominated to host the Games.

Joan Fontcuberta
 

Joan Fontcuberta (Barcelona, 1955) has been working for more than five decades in the field of photography, and has also been active as a teacher, essayist and exhibition curator.  

He has taught, among other centres, at the Audiovisual Communication Studies at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, at the Department of Visual & Environmental Studies at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and at Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Artes Contemporains, Turcoing, France.  

He has had solo exhibitions of his work at major centres such as MoMA (New York, 1988), M.I.T. (Cambridge, 1988), Musée d'Art Contemporain, Paris, France. (Cambridge, 1988), Musée Cantini (Marseille, 1990), Art Institute (Chicago, 1990), IVAM (Valencia, 1992), MNAC (Barcelona, 1999), Museum of Fine Arts (Fukui, Japan), Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome, 2001), ARTIUM (Vitoria/Gasteiz, 2003), Australian Center of Photography (Sydney, Sydney, 2007), Palau de la Virgili (Barcelona, 1999), 2007), Palau de la Virreina (Barcelona, 2008), MEP (Paris, 2014), Science Museum (London, 2014), Museu d'Art Contemporani Can Framis (Barcelona, 2021), Museo de la Universidad de Navarra (Pamplona, 2024), Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung (Berlin, 2024), and Tabakalera (Donostia, 2025).  

His work can be found in the collections of museums such as the MoMA in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the IVAM in Valencia, the MACBA in Barcelona and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He was awarded the National Photography Prize (1998) and the National Essay Prize (2011) by the Ministry of Culture. In 2012 he received the National Prize for Visual Arts Culture awarded by the CoNCA and in 2013 the Hasselblad Foundation International Prize. In 2021 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Sorbonne University Paris VIII.

Arnau Rovira

Arnau Rovira is a photographer and visual creator based in Barcelona. He studied Cinematography (DOP) at ESCAC until 2009 and began his career in the fields of cinema and video. Since 2017, he has focused entirely on photography, working as a freelance photographer. His work has been featured in various photography festivals across Spain, including Getxophoto, Panòramic, ArtPhoto Bcn, Menorca DocFest, Revela’t, Mirades, Fineart Igualada, and Pa-ta-ta in Granada, among others. His photographs have also been published in renowned magazines such as El País Semanal, Wired, The British Journal of Photography, GUP, De Morgen, Ignant, and De Standaard. He has been selected for artist residencies such as Encontros de Artistas Novos and Fabra i Coats in Barcelona. Rovira has published three photobooks: A Trilogy of Unusual Architectures (2020), Flash (2021), and his most recent, Free Party. Currently, he balances personal projects with commissions related to architecture and design, and is also part of the organizing team of Festival Mirades, a photography festival based in Girona.