Exhibitions
Cristina de Middel transforms the IVAM into a visual avalanche with 'Apotheosis Now'
The Alicante photographer presents a large immersive installation that questions the saturation of images and the role of art in the digital age.
The Valencian Institute of Modern Art will host Apoteosis Now , the new major exhibition by the Alicante photographer Cristina de Middel, considered one of the Spanish artists with the most international projection, from May 21 to October 12, 2026. Curated by Iván de la Nuez and the artist herself, the exhibition brings together 252 photographs of various formats in a proposal specifically conceived for gallery 6 of the Valencian museum.
Far from the classic retrospective format, Apoteosis Now unfolds as a large immersive installation where images coexist without apparent hierarchies, forming a kind of visual explosion. Cristina de Middel defines this montage as a “cataract”: a metaphor that alludes both to the incessant cascade of images typical of our time and to the growing inability to look at them clearly.
Cristina De Middel, GREEN, from the Apoteosis Now series, 2026. Cristina De Middel_ Magnum Photos.
The exhibition proposes a critical —but never cathartic— journey on the visual overabundance that dominates contemporary times. Photographs loaded with facts, intuitions, myths, uncertainties, mutations, symbols and fictions construct a hybrid universe where photojournalism, conceptual narrative and imagination constantly coexist.
In this context, Apoteosis Now proposes an incisive reflection on the relationship between people and digital images. According to the exhibition, trends are no longer pursued by viewers, but rather they are the ones who pursue them. Social networks thus appear as spaces capable of trapping rather than emancipating, while art is vindicated as an “intelligent artifice” in the face of the irruption of artificial intelligence and algorithms.
Cristina De Middel, from the series Apoteosis Now 2026. Magnum Photos.
The exhibition proposal invites the visitor to slow down, observe and question the way they consume images in a visual ecosystem dominated by speed and saturation. Each photograph acts as an open window to a fragmented reality, full of flashes that, rather than dazzling, aspire to generate critical thinking.
The exhibition also incorporates echoes of some of Cristina de Middel's most emblematic series, including The Afronauts, the work that placed her on the international art scene thanks to her poetic and critical revision of Western stereotypes about Africa.
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