VAT. Guillem de Castro, 118
The IVAM remains committed (in the best sense of the word) in teaching the art that is made on the shores of the Mediterranean and in revaluing the work of women artists who have not always had it easy. Two characteristics that have marked the course of the museum in the last six years in which José Miguel Cortés has directed the ship with success to recover the credit lost during the darkest period of the institution. Gülsün Karamustafa's exhibition, one of the last ones to bear Cortés' signature (also commissioner in this case) and the first major individual exhibition of the Turkish artist in Spain, It is marked by a Mediterranean city that has been a melting pot of cultures and a bridge between Asia and Europe since time immemorial., between East and West: Istanbul. Like ancient Constantinople, Karamustafa is a woman between two worlds, aware that she is.: “I am not an oriental artist, but neither, evidently, occidental”. She is a rebellious artist who criticizes orientalist painting. (There is precisely an exhibition in this regard at the IVAM until today. 13 of September: Orientalismos) and the fragmentary and mystical way that the West has traditionally had of portraying oriental women. Besides, strengthening the ties between high and low culture, questions the hegemonic concept of Modernity that the West has imposed because it considers that there are many ways of understanding Modernity. Karamustafa represents a hybrid world, baroque and suggestive through everyday elements such as clothing, rugs or decorative fabrics, using all kinds of materials and techniques that question gender, the role assigned to women and men in Turkish society. You will find his series Prison paintings of 1972 about the daily life of women in prison inspired by their own prison experience, works that highlight the hypocrisy of Turkish society with transsexuality or turn the male vision of the Turkish hammam on its head., y Mystic transport, a piece that vindicates what migrants from the interior of agricultural Turkey contribute when they arrive in Istanbul. Again, women and the Mediterranean at the IVAM. ¡Viva! AU
