popular

Curated by: Pedro G. Romero

What is popular? Popular does not mean famous. Popular does not mean the products of mass culture. Popular does not mean the art of the people. Popular does not mean the handicrafts of the working class. Popular does not mean folklore. Popular does not mean clichés or tourist souvenirs. The popular moves between all that and beneath all that, but it is something else. popular is an exhibition and a research project—teaching is a form of knowledge—that tries to answer that question.

The popular is a form of imagination, often words, images and things, produced in very different ways through gestures, actions and festivities. The popular has a performative, plastic and mobile nature in constant metamorphosis, closer to ritual than to the monument—a liturgy with no theology whatsoever. popular starts from a strong interpretation. Those human groups who have no political representation at all, for whatever reason, thoroughly develop their symbolic representation.

popular works on the rich collection of the IVAM, broadening the focus onto certain aspects such as music, and spotlighting numerous facets of the collection such as the imaginary of the working classes, and showing up absences, among them the Afro-descendant imagination. popular draws on the IVAM archive while relating its gazes in a new way (Niño de Elche, for instance, has made songs out of 15 pieces in the collection), overflowing the framework of what modern art means (another of the qualities of the popular) and at the same time trying to mark clear guidelines for reading.

The exhibition brings together over 1,500 pieces, including prints, audiovisuals, installations, sculptures, paintings, photographs, books and documentation, mostly from the IVAM collection, together with pieces from other centres, museums and private collections, as The Colección Michael Jenkins & Javier Romero housed at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Alicante (MACA), the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC).

On the occasion of this exhibition, the IVAM is publishing an ample catalogue. Designed by Filiep Tacq, it compiles the essays on the exhibition written by its curator, Pedro G. Romero, together with an anthology of texts of Antonio Machado, Maruja Mallo, Federico García Lorca and others.