Places categories: IVAM Centre Julio González

The IVAM (Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno) opened in 1989. It was the first modern and contemporary art museum project fostered in Spain following the country’s devolution and the need to acknowledge and promote art and culture.

The exhibition tells us how the IVAM came about and who the process stakeholders were, delving into identity features such as the collections and the building. The context in which the museum was created is also a key element in the exhibition, making its local framework and circumstances visible. Likewise, the contents of the case study are connected to the international scene through the exhibition 1989. The end of the 20th century.

1989 was a historic year. It put an end to an era defined by the Cold War and confrontations between East and West, between pro-Soviet dictatorships and Western democracies. The exhibition focuses on events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the opening of the Eastern Bloc, the AIDS crisis and the cultural wars that followed the conservative wave in the United States and Europe, the beginning of the end of Apartheid in South Africa, and the development of multiculturalism as a concept before globalisation.

As the backdrop to the foundation of the IVAM, the project gives an overview of art production in 1989 using key events from that very year as a starting point and making visible the meta-narratives that emerged at the time.

Beyond the idyllic view of the Mediterranean Sea portrayed in the early 20th century by northern painters who were fascinated by its light, the Mediterranean has encompassed a superimposition, mingling and confrontation of languages, cultures and religions since the beginning of history. It is also an urban context, consisting of historic cities that have been destroyed and rebuilt, illusory holiday agglomerations and camps of people who do not have access to the city.

The Mediterranean has been a home for citizens since ancient Greece, which involves rejection of people who make it possible for the city to live but to whom the status of citizen is not granted, and it forms the setting for habits and customs and ways of life, shaped by a habitat that allows them to breathe or constricts them. The Mediterranean Sea is water that runs deep.

Inhabiting the Mediterranean is an exhibition with a mosaic of images, of ancient and contemporary works, of artists from all its shores, all translating the complex, contradictory, inclusive and exclusive image of peoples and cities, erected with walls that allow passage or present a barrier, beneath a light that illuminates or blinds.

Artists included in exhibition: Herbert List, Anna Marín, Camille Henrot, Ali Cherri, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Marwan Rechmaoui, Rayyane Tabet, Susan Hefuna, Zarina Hashmi, Dora García, Le Corbusier, Ismaïl Bahri, Joan Hernández Pijuan, Juan Muñoz, Hrair Sarkissian, Sergi Aguilar, Gabriele Basilico, Abbas Kiarostami, Taysir Batniji, Jordi Colomer, José Manuel Ballester, Juan Uslé, Marie Menken, Maria Lai, Tonino Casula, Albert García-Alzórriz, Dieter Roth and Richard Hamilton, Till Roeskens, Massinissa Selmani, Anne-Marie Filaire, Mohammed Al-Hawajri, Majd Abdel Hamid, Khaled Jarrar, Rami Farah, Randa Mirza, Anila Rubiku, Kader Attia, Martin Parr, Vasantha Yogananthan, Julia Schulz-Dornburg, Carlos Spottorno, Corinne Silva, Yazan Khalili, Efrat Shvily.