Presentation of the exhibition Mona Hatoum, by the artist.

The exhibition pays tribute to Mona Hatoum, winner of the 2020 Julio González Award, through a selection of key works by the artist, including sculptures, large-scale installations and artworks on paper, mostly created over the last two decades, some of which have already achieved iconic status in contemporary art.

During the presentation Mona Hatoum will make a tour of the rooms, and through the images of the works that compose the exhibition, she will talk about her interest in creating simple and reductionist pieces that have an emotional and psychological impact on the viewer, as well as the deliberate incorporation in her works of paradoxical layers of meaning that generate an ambiguity and ambivalence that make possible different and contradictory readings of her creations.

Mona Hatoum was born into a Palestinian family in Beirut in 1952. While on a short visit to London in 1975 the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War prevented her from returning home and she has lived in London ever since. She has held solo exhibitions in numerous museums in Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia. She has also participated in many important international exhibitions including the Venice Biennale (1995 and 2005), Documenta, Kassel (2002 and 2017), Biennale of Sydney (2006) and Istanbul Biennial (1995 and 2011). Recent solo exhibitions include a major survey organised by Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015), Tate Modern, London and KIASMA, Helsinki (2016-2017).

In the framework of the exhibition “Mechanical and Technical Imaginaries in the IVAM Collection“, the artist Gary Hill will give a lecture in which he will share with the audience his reflections and research on image and video.

“For quite some time I have considered the video as a kind of past event that has been subsumed by spectacle, which incorporates ever-increasing resolution, infinitely configurable massive screens, and usually pervasive sound.

Language is not the virus. The image is the virus and it doesn’t come from outer space; it’s insidious and it’s everywhere, here and now.” Gary Hill

Bio
Gary Hill (b. 1951, Santa Monica, CA) has worked with a broad range of media – including sculpture, sound, video, installation and performance – since the early 1970’s. His longtime work with intermedia continues to explore an array of issues ranging from the physicality of language, synesthesia and perceptual conundrums to ontological space and viewer interactivity.

Exhibitions of his work have been presented at museums and institutions worldwide, including solo exhibitions at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Guggenheim Museum SoHo, New York; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel; Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona; and Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, among others.

He commissioned projects include works for the Science Museum in London and the Seattle Central Public Library in Seattle, Washington, and an installation and performance work for the Coliseum and Temple of Venus and Rome in Italy. Hill has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations, and has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, most notably the Leone d’Oro Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale (1995), a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award (1998), the Kurt-Schwitters-Preis (2000), and honorary doctorates from The Academy of Fine Arts Poznan, Poland (2005) and Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, WA (2011).

Hill has also collaborated with several artists, including George Quasha and Charles Stein on the publication An Art of Limina: Gary Hill’s Works & Writings. Or in 1998 he collaborated with the choreographer Meg Stuart and her dance company Damaged Goods to produce Splayed Mind Out, which was performed over 50 times in Europe, South America and the United States.

His most recent project is a book, You Know Where I’m At and I Know Where You’re At, written in “collaboration” with the spirit of the american native Martin Cothren (1960 – 2016), and published by Dis Voir in Paris (2021).

The conversation between the two curators will reveal the keys to the research that led to the creation of the exhibition Renau in exile. This exhibition attempts to reconstruct the different historical and creative contexts to which the exiled poster artist, photomontage artist, muralist and writer Josep Renau had to adapt during his fascinating life journey.
Joan Ramon Escrivà and Josep Salvador, curators of IVAM, will pay special attention to the analysis of the contexts of Renau’s mural works in Mexico and in communist Berlin, as well as to the problematic of the so-called American Way of Life, one of the main areas of reflection in the work of the Valencian artist during the cultural Cold War.

In recent years screens have acquired a huge presence in our daily lives. They have grown in size in our homes, they are embedded in consumer electronics such as watches and cell phones, and in public space we see them covering entire facades like a membrane.

“A visit to the stunning Amano collection of pre-Columbian textiles in Lima made me aware of the relationship of the contemporary screen with the textile tradition. Both generate images through visual intertwining, and although distant in time, both are surfaces used to represent a worldview of the world. As an artist who frequently works with screens, I begin to see a direct relationship of the internal wiring of screens to the threads and knots of a carpet or tapestry. This relationship allows me to see the screen not as a neutral window to the world, but as a cultural device that has a rich historical background.”

Daniel Canogar´s life and career have bridged between Spain and the U.S. He started with photography as his earliest medium of choice, receiving a M.A. from the New York University and the International Center of Photography in 1990, but he soon became interested in the possibilities of the projected image and installation art. He has created permanent public art installations with LED screens and has carried out numerous exhibition projects that have been presented in museums around the world.
More info here: http://danielcanogar.com/es/bio