Exhibitions
Against the hierarchy of materials: A half fire shakes the story
The tour curated by Blanca de la Torre claims ceramics, textiles and natural fibers as spaces for critical thinking and territorial memory, with an initial stop at the IVAM and a tour through Palma, Huesca and L'Espluga de Francolí.
The exhibition A mig foc begins its tour at the IVAM from February 18 to June 14, before touring various centers in Spain: the Casal Solleric and the Es Baluard Museum of Contemporary Art of Palma, in Palma; the CDAN Center for Art and Nature, in Huesca; and the Terra Museum, in Espluga de Francolí, where it can be seen between October and December of this year.
Curated by Blanca de la Torre , the exhibition proposes a temporary journey that focuses on contemporary artistic practices capable of overflowing entrenched material hierarchies. Through a constellation of proposals, the project reclaims materials and techniques traditionally relegated to areas considered minor or subaltern—ceramics, clay, wool, textiles, embroidery, esparto, palm, wicker and other natural fibers, as well as sounds and silences—and places them at the center of the current aesthetic and conceptual debate.
Belén Rodríguez, Distilled from a landscape, 2023, Photography Juan García.
Halfway between critical review and celebration of the craft, A mig foc opens spaces for reflection on the boundaries between art and craftsmanship, production and care, tradition and contemporaneity. The result is an invitation to rethink material imaginaries from a perspective that recognizes the political and poetic power of what, until recently, had been confined to the margins.
Through the works and the diversity of materialities that make them up, the exhibition brings us closer to non-hegemonic knowledge rooted in the territories: crafts, trades and traditions linked to the land and its cycles. These practices, often located on the margins of the dominant artistic narrative, emerge here as spaces of knowledge, transmission and cultural resistance.
Sonia Navarro, Espartaria V, 2024, IVAM.
The exhibition brings together work by Ana Laura Aláez, Pilar Albarracín, Javier Bravo, Saskia Calderón, Susana Cámara Leret, Ricardo Calero, Ana Esteve Llorens, Antonio Fernández Alvira, Marta Font, Julie C. Fortier, Josefina Guilisasti, Noemi Iglesias Barrios, Mónica Jover, Cecilia Jurado Chueca, Glenda León, Sandra Mar, Adriana Meunié, Sonia Navarro, Lara Ordóñez, Nuria Riaza, Belén Rodríguez, Laura Segura, Isabel Servera, Laurita Siles, Jessica Stockholder, Sarah Viguer and Concha Ybarra.
As a prelude to the inauguration of A mig foc , a conversation will be held with the curator of the exhibition, Blanca de la Torre, accompanied by David Barro, director of the Es Baluard Museum of Contemporary Art in Palma, and Aida Boix, director of the Terra Museum. This dialogue will serve to delve deeper into the conceptual lines of the project and its itinerancy, as well as to reflect on the role of institutions in the critical rereading of contemporary material imaginaries.
Ana Laura Aláez, Hilera de Traiciones, 2025, Photography David Bonet.
