VITORIA-GASTEIZ.- On 2 February 2024, Artium Museoa will present the exhibition edonor denok inor ez. Arte-hezkuntzaren instituzionalizazio-prozesuak Euskal Herrian, 1978-1991 (Anybody Everybody Nobody. Institutionalisation Processes of Art Education in the Basque Country, 1978-1991). The show emphasises the moment when the Bilbao Higher School of Fine Arts became a Faculty and was integrated into the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) in 1978. It also highlights the demands of students who were calling for a form of teaching that was less marked by academic models, as well as the demands of other Basque artists who requested more direct involvement, initially in the school and later in the university. edonor denok inor ez is curated by Mikel Onandia, Sergio Rubira and Leire Vergara, and it marks a continuation of the exhibition project entitled Un sitio para pensar. Escuelas y prácticas educativas experimentales de arte en el País Vasco (1957-1977) (A Place to Think. Experimental Art Schools and Educational Practices in the Basque Country, 1957-1979), which was presented at Artium Museoa in 2022.

The Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country will present two new projects to the public on 26 April. One is an exhibition by Ibon Aranberri (Itziar-Deba, Gipuzkoa, 1969) entitled Vista parcial (Partial Sight), which includes a selection of works ranging from the 1990s to the present day. Most of the pieces allude to the artist’s ongoing concern for resignification through the political actions of either natural or human-constructed places whose social consideration has been diminishing and that have partially been transformed by the social, economic and political needs of the moment. Vista parcial is curated by Beatriz Herráez and Manuel Borja-Villel and organised in collaboration with the Reina Sofía National Museum and Art Centre (MNCARS). The exhibition will be shown in a new presentation format that includes a new selection of major works by the Basque artist following its run at MNCARS, where it can currently be visited until March 2024.

On the same day, 26 April, Artium Museoa will also present UNFORM by Patricia Dauder (Barcelona, 1973), an exhibition that brings together sculptures, drawings, installations and films that jointly explore the artist’s interest in tracing disappearances, affective moments that often leave almost imperceptible traces. The exhibition also confirms the artist’s attention to the passage of time through accumulation and erasure. Dauder’s work often uses found objects to evoke the potential stories enclosed in domestic spaces that are quickly dispersed by Barcelona’s often brutal urban development. UNFORM is curated by Catalina Lozano.

The centenary of the birth of the two most important Basque artists of the 20th century will be celebrated in 2024: Néstor Basterretxea (Bermeo, 1924 – Hondarribia, 2014) and Eduardo Chillida (Donostia/San Sebastian, 1924-2002). Artium Museoa will dedicate an exhibition to each of these two artists.

In the case of the multifaceted Néstor Basterretxea, the museum will explore his legacy in the field of cinematography from 10 May, after having received a donation of the artist’s archive from his family. The exploration will focus on well-known films such as his experimental Operación H, as well as on projects that were left unfinished or never got off the ground, given that extensive documentation exists about these works. The exhibition will open in May, the month in which the artist was born. Part of the project also includes the museum presenting the cataloguing of more than 5,000 documents developed by its Documentation Centre. The catalogue will be accessible to researchers and museum audiences and includes correspondence, manuscripts, drawings and sketches, leaflets, photographs and plans of different projects, among other materials. The project is directed by Elena Roseras, head of the Artium Museoa Documentation Centre.

Opening on 15 November, the exhibition dedicated to Eduardo Chillida, Chillida. Usos aplicados (Chillida. Applied Uses), will present his facet as an illustrator and maker of two-dimensional shapes and icons, whether within the framework of his own exhibitions or as commissions made for both public and private organisations and institutions. The show will explore the expanded universe of Chillidian silhouettes and underline his relationship to graphic design, poster art, textile arts, ceramics or jewellery, as well as the object-related notion of by-product and so-called “corporate identity”. The exhibition is curated by Peio Aguirre.

From 20 September, the Belgian artist Jöelle Tuerlinckx (Brussels, 1958) will transform the exhibition space to explore the interstices and inner workings of the museum as institution, using both memory and automatisation as ways to examine the space and relations that are produced within it. Curated by Beatriz Herráez and Catalina Lozano, it is Tuerlinckx’s first exhibition in the Basque Country.

On 18 October, Artium Museoa will present an exhibition dedicated to Joxerra Melguizo (Vitoria-Gasteiz, 1968) that shows the result of a work based on process, on the need to do, on Oteiza’s maxim that “art is for someone who wants to live but knows not how”. Melguizo returns to drawing and painting for this journey in a daily process that is associated with the elaboration of a personal diary. A production that takes the form of a remnant and trace of the everyday. The project is curated by Enrique Mtz. Goikoetxea.

As part of the Plazaratu project – the programme’s name refers to two meanings of the term in Basque: on the one hand, to go out/take to the square or to show oneself to the public, and on the other hand, to publish – the museum continues to work in a crosscutting manner in its areas of action and to think about its urban environment by developing projects and programmes that transform its relationship with its audiences. Its work with the Lorategi, an urban garden located in its inner courtyard that is primarily run by groups of volunteers and museum staff, has been joined in recent years by works produced by Alberto Peral, José Ramón Ais, Néstor Basterretxea and, in 2023, Esther Ferrer. Among the actions planned for 2024 is the development of a project with the artist Irene Kopelman (Cordoba, Argentina, 1974) that connects “the square” of the museum with a specific project associated with the geological history of the territory of Alava.

It should also be noted that the exhibition Tierra de los amigos (Land of Friends) by the artist Carolina Caycedo (London, 1978), which opened at Artium Museoa in October 2023, will run until 4 April. The exhibition brings together a vast body of work focused on her research into the social movements and communities that oppose the construction of large energy infrastructures, including hydroelectric projects in different parts of the world. Tierra de los amigos is the first European survey of Carolina Caycedo’s work, a co-production between the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art; Artium Museoa, Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country, and the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM). The exhibition is curated by Catalina Lozano and Irene Aristizábal.

Finally, the museum’s Z Gallery programme, which explores the field of the moving image in the museum space, will present a film by the Moroccan artist Randa Maroufi (Casablanca, 1987) entitled Bab Sebta (Ceuta’s Gate) on 12 January 2024. The film explores the border crossing between Morocco and Spain and the negotiations that occur there on a daily basis. Z Gallery is currently screening the film Soneto de alimañas (Sonnet of Vermin) by the Mexican artist Naomi Rincón Gallardo (Raleigh, 1979) until 4 January.