Interpretations of the Exhibition with Adriana Murad Konings

In this session, Adriana Murad Konings will offer their own reading of The Assault of Illusion connecting the works, mechanisms and strategies of representation that the exhibition proposes with the central debates in their field of research and practice.

"Every act of creation, however frivolous it may seem, is, in essence, an act of magic!", says a character in a novel by Robert Coover. Something similar happens when we read a novel. We enter an invented world, which, nonetheless, in reading, becomes something possible, something that exists.

This conference proposes to explore how the pact proposed by narrative fiction works, as well as the resources that make it possible for us to inhabit the fictional reality of a novel. What mechanisms allow a novel to seem plausible to us? Do we ask the novel to convince us, to move us, or even to deceive us? It is also inevitable to think about the political implications of fiction. How can a taste for fiction be reconciled with a distrust of the manipulation of truth? Can the novel draw a line between the rules of invention and reality? How does reading novels teach us to read the world?

To answer these questions, we will look for answers in fiction itself: What does the novel itself say about its illusory capacity? From its origins to its popularisation as a widely disseminated and consumed genre, the novel has done nothing but exploit its artificial nature and reflect upon it. The novel does not seduce us despite its fictional or unreal nature, but precisely because it proposes that illusion of reality explicitly. The novel, in other words, allows us to provisionally believe in the existence of the narrated world, only to then break its spell.

If, as Vladimir Nabokov said, the writer is a "great enchanter," he is also a magician who has no shame in revealing his tricks. And it is there, in that revelation, that the novel reaches its most sophisticated form of seduction: when it allows its reader to participate in the act of magic.

The readings linked to the lecture are also inscribed in Situations (making) #10, Santa Mònica's collective learning and research programme, aimed at critically analysing how cultural devices configure illusions that shape our desire and our idea of reality.

This proposal forms part of the exhibition's public programme, which under the title Interpretations of the exhibition brings together seven contemporary voices to deepen and expand the questions raised by the project.

With the participation of Adriana Murad Konings


Adriana Murad Konings (Madrid, 1997) holds a PhD in Literature from the University of York. She graduated in General and Comparative Literature from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and got her master's degree Literary Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, and another in Narrative at the Ateneu Barcelonès Escola d'Escriptura. She was one of the translators of Hilda Doolittle's collected poetry. As a writer, she debuted with Los días leves (Binomio, 2023), a finalist for both the Herralde Novel Prize (2020) and the Nadal Prize (2023). Her second novel, Los idólatras y todos los que aman, was also part of the final selection for the Herralde Novel Prize in 2023.