Es Baluard continues its commitment to the visibility of women, and focussing its programme on gender and transgender projects

Once again Es Baluard dedicates the first few months of the year to artists and training and research projects linked to its gender and transgender programme. In the field of exhibitions, visitors will be able to see displays by the artists Teresa Matas, Marina Núñez and Shirin Neshat, in the first monographic exhibitions the museum has dedicated to these three creators, and new perspectives with regard to the permanent collection. The project by the artist Ana Gallardo “A place to live in when we are old”, “Indrets invisibles” (invisible places) with Sa Galania and the participation of María Ruido; Locus amoenus, by Juanjo Oliva, centred on cruising as landscape; the conference by Victoria Combalía and the screening of her documentary Dora Maar, a pesar de Picasso (Dora Maar, in spite of Picasso); the incorporations of Susana Blas and Semíramis González in the project in progress “Dada Women”; and a meeting with one of the artists from “Permanent Collection”, Concha Jerez.

“Why do I dress in black if I love life so much? (Teresa Matas. A review based on contemporaneity)”is the first exhibition Es Baluard has dedicated to this Mallorcan artist. Under the curatorship of Nekane Aramburu, and with the collaboration of several groups of curators such as María José Corominas, Ana Bárbara Cardellà, Magda Albis and Pilar Rubí, and spatial and scenographic design by Miquel Martorell, this review can be visited from 3^rd February. Teresa Matas, who has been working since the ‘seventies, has had an independent career outside of all classification, moving between different formats and techniques.

Moreover, from 4^th February, works by Shirin Neshat can be seen in Es Baluard’s Gabinet space, revolving around the piece “Fervor”. A visual discourse on two complex subjects, the roles of gender and contemporary Islamic societies, attempting to transcend towards a universal significance at all times. This is how Shirin Neshat defines her own work, which she has developed using photography, video and film since the 1990s.

From 9^th March, after the master class she will impart on the 8^th, an exhibition by Marina Nuñez will be open to the public, following in the wake of March 2016 with Narcisa Hirsch. We turn our gaze to the limits of experimental film with the arts, the visual tricks linked to early cinema projections and the intervention in the sampling of video-games that generate new, auratic universes integrated into the skin of spaces. A project designed for the Aljub, the old 17^th-century underground water cistern in the Es Baluard cultural complex, in which the creator immerses us in a suggestive atmosphere in complicity with the history of the place and the energies of past lives.

In the field of research, the museum’s Observatori is currently displaying “Locus amoenus –cruising landscapes”. This is a research proposal in progress, by way of a trial, by Juanjo Oliva, which seeks to deconstruct airtight compartments that determine who occupies the landscape, taking the sexual practice known as cruising as a place of heterogeneous transversalities and tangentialities.

Until 2^nd February the Argentinian artist Ana Gallardo executes “A place to live when we are old. A school of desired trades”. Integrated as part of the programme for the elderly “GranGent/GentGran”, this activity will project a teaching space of workshops for desired trades, imparted by elderly people to the general public.

Also in the field of training, from 31^st January on Sa Galania. Art, cultura i mediació will be carrying out the project “Indrets invisibles” (invisible places), with the participation of María Ruido. In it, a group of women in a situation of social risk will engage the public space on the basis of their own subjectivities, and reflect on the relationship they themselves have with the city and its different public spaces, using contemporary art practices.

The curator Victoria Combalía will hold a conference on 22^nd March and one day later will present the documentary Dora Maar, in spite of Picasso, co-directed with Alejandro Lasala. The documentary reviews the life and work of this French artist, situating her in the artistic context of the surrealism and photography of the 1930s and providing the keys to understanding a complex, secretive and mysterious character whom history placed in the shadow of Picasso.

Also in this sphere, the open, participative project “Dones dadà” (Dada Women) includes two new creators. Over coming months Susana Blas and Semíramis González will be presenting a proposal based on the idea of "circular  historical time", to be specified in two research projects: "Female Spanish artists and Dada" and "Dada processes with Aurora Duque". “Dada Women” is an archive in progress in which diverse creators document, research and disseminate the work of women linked to this movement in one way or another, and whose first stage could be seen in Es Baluard’s Es Baluard at the end of 2015.

In addition, as a continuous whole with regard to the museography of the museum’s collection, which takes particular interest in the tasks of thought and artwork produced by women, until January of 2018 the exhibition “Permanent Collection” can be seen, which has as its vectors the works of prominent artists such as Ana Mendieta, Marina Abramovic, Katy Bonnín and Concha Jerez. The latter will hold a rendezvous with the public on 5^th April from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm, in which the artist will review conceptual art in Spain and her work based on the piece Silencio.