Julià Panadès at ARCOmadrid 2023

The IEB participates in ARCOmadrid 2023 with the project «Mediterranean Souvenir: Ofrenes» by Julià Panadès, curated by Àngels Miralda

The proposal has won the open call launched by the Institute of Balearic Studies

The Institut d'Estudis Baleàrics (IEB) participates in the contemporary art fair ARCOmadrid 2023 with its own institutional stand, located in the ARCO Espacios Culturales section. This year the project that has been selected to represent the Balearic Islands is "Mediterranean Souvenir: Offerings", by Julià Panadès, curated by Àngels Miralda.

The Ministry of European Funds, University and Culture, through the IEB, participates in ARCOMadrid with an institutional stand to promote and give visibility to artistic creation in the field of visual arts. Julià Panadès' proposal has won the open call launched by the IEB to select a curation project for the stand of the Institute of Balearic Studies at ARCOmadrid 2023, which will be held from February 22 to 26 at IFEMA Feria from Madrid.

Among the 7 projects presented in the call, Julià Panadès' proposal was the best rated by the jury, made up of Alexandra Laudo, curator; Martí Manen, director of the Index Foundation; Antonio Ortega, artist and teacher at Massana, University of Barcelona; Ester Prat, teacher and cultural manager; Sergio Rubira, curator, critic and teacher; Aina Aguiló, deputy director of the IEB; and Karen Andrea Müller, head of the visual arts area of the IEB.

"Mediterranean Souvenir: Ofrenes" was born in 2014 on the coast of Mallorca and includes performance, sculpture and photography. As "totemistic" sculptures, these "offerings" can be interpreted as much as a form of reverence to the consumer culture in which we live as a proposal for spiritual practices of a polluted present in which the earth enters the geological age of "plasticene".

In the publication that accompanies the exhibition, the curatorial text by Àngels Miralda contextualizes the work of Julià Panadès and is complemented by a writing by the marine biologist Carme Alomar, which focuses on the problem of plastic pollution in the Mediterranean Sea, in support of the demand for the care and conservation of a highly vulnerable marine ecosystem that needs to be preserved for future generations.

Àngels Miralda describes her work as a curator as a secret politics of materiality, with the belief that materials contain embedded meanings, related to global chains of extraction, trade and industry. Her most recent exhibitions have been nourished by research on Arte Povera, neomaterialisms and the roots of installation art from the perspective of art history in order to draw parallels similarities between the materials used by the artists and the planetary phenomena. She has organized exhibitions at the National Gallery of Modern Art (Bombay), Tallinn Art Salon (Estonia), MGLC - International Center for Graphic Arts (Ljubljana), De Appel (Amsterdam), Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic (Zagreb), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Chile (Santiago), Museo de Angra do Heroísmo (Terceira - Azores), and the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art (Riga). As an author, Miralda has written texts for publications and monographs on artists in collaboration with the Patricia Ready Gallery (Santiago de Chile), GRIMM Gallery (Amsterdam), Academy of Fine Arts (Prague), and Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), among others, and has edited the book Olev Subbi: Landscapes from the End of Times ('Olev Subbi: Paisatges des del end dels dies'), published by Lugemik Books (Tallinn).

Miralda regularly collaborates with the "Critics' Picks" section of Artforum (New York), Terremoto (Mexico City), A*Desk (Barcelona), and is the editor-in-chief of Collecteurs AGENDA (New York ).

Julià Panadès (Mallorca, 1981) graduated in Design, Illustration and Animation. His work has been exhibited in Spain, Amsterdam, Helsinki, London, Berlin and Bogota. Individually, he has exhibited at Fran Reus Gallery (Palma), Addaya Contemporary Art Center (Mallorca), Alegria Gallery (Barcelona) or Pàrraga Center (Murcia). Group exhibitions at Es Baluard Museum of Contemporary Art in Palma, at Espai La Rambleta (Valencia), at CCCC Center del Carme Cultura Contemporània in Valencia, at Tabakalera Donosti or at MACE (Eivissa) stand out. He has been selected in different competitions, notably the Ciutat de Palma Award, the JustMad award, and he was the winner of the CAC de Palma's call for mediation projects. He was also resident at the BilbaoArte Foundation and at the Tabakalera International Center for Contemporary Culture. He is the founder and manager of TACA, an independent cultural space in Palma.