Happy (little) girls

This show forms part of the multidisciplinary project Viva Valencia! and it consists of the following sections: Learning. NotebooksÁgatha Ruiz de la Prada’s calligraphic designs from which the forms and shapes in her world originate are presented in a referential framework of items intended to accompany learning during childhood. Playing. Swings and children’s gamesPlay as a professedly innocent leitmotiv in Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada’s work. This section features items that she has designed to construct a world of play, creativity and instruction in childhood. Recounting. Models of fashion showsDiscourse as a creator of images, references, archetypes, environments and messages when it comes to constructing a personal history and transferring it to the collective unconscious. This section shows the scenic settings in which she expresses her ideas. Exploring. Boots and shoesGrowth is achieved in our exploration of the world around us through learning, play and the perception of new concepts and intellectual structures. This section presents the new paths of learning that Ágatha pursues, together with her designs for childhood in the area of children’s footwear fashion. Living. ClothesThis last exhibition area shows her children’s fashion designs as a compendium of her personal ideas. Giuliana Parabiago, editor of Vogue Bambini, points out that Ágatha is immediately recognisable because designers merely dress you while she changes your mood. I think that none of the people who have seen one of her fashion shows remain indifferent and go away just as they came, without letting themselves be carried away by the enthusiasm and the powerful, irresistible creative energy expressed by each of her garments and each of her accessories, including the ones that are seemingly most insignificant. This is where her strength lies, filling us with her sense of happiness, making us smile and transporting us to a parallel world imbued with intense colours, full of vitality and hope and animated by a profound, indomitable sense of playfulness.Her concept of creation goes beyond a multidisciplinary approach, transcending the pure instrumentality of her works to display her creativity, constructing a personal world in which the expression of her personality becomes a way of life.In the course of her professional activity she has paid very special attention to childhood, revealing the concern she feels for the difficulties that children face and her commitment to their psychological and physiological development, their education and the free construction of their personality. The importance of aesthetics and the perception of it through lively contact with an aesthetic discourse of quality from childhood lead her to work in a specific, differentiated way on the designs that she creates for consumption by children.A catalogue has been published to accompany the exhibition, with illustrations of the works exhibited and texts by the director of the IVAM, Consuelo Císcar, and by Giuliana Parabiago, José Vicente Plaza Almenar and Mara Calabuig. It also includes exhaustive information about the work Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada has produced in the world of children’s fashion and paediatrics.