Mallorca receives 'A media lumbre', exhibition of contemporary art and artisan crafts

PalmaThe collective exhibition A media lumbre, an interterritorial exhibition on contemporary art and artisan crafts that is part of the Biennal B project, arrives in Mallorca. The exhibition project, which brings together 49 artists, will be on view on the island after its presentation in February at the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM), and will be inaugurated in three different spaces and at different times: Wednesday, July 22, at Sa Refinadora (Marratxí), at 7 p.m.; and Thursday, July 23, at Casal Solleric, at 7:30 p.m., and at Es Baluard Museu d’Art Contemporani, at 8:30 p.m. The exhibition can be visited in Palma until October 18, 2026.

The vice-president and minister of Culture and Heritage of the Consell de Mallorca, Antònia Roca, has highlighted that "Biennal B is a strategic commitment by the Consell de Mallorca to promote contemporary culture rooted in the territory and capable of circulating between municipalities. A media lumbre demonstrates this very well: it is born in a major urban museum like the IVAM and rediscovers, here in Mallorca, the land, the craft, and the memory of the hands". "It is a way of understanding culture as a living archive, which never stops and connects us with what has made us who we are", she said.

The project, curated by Blanca de la Torre, director of IVAM, brings together a set of works and practices that dialogue with materials and knowledge historically considered minor arts: ceramics, clay, wool, textiles, embroidery, and natural fibers. Sounds and silences are also added to these materials: the voice appears as a tool for transmission, reclaiming oral tradition as a vehicle of memory, as happened in the ancient filandons, those nocturnal gatherings around the fire where manual labor and shared storytelling intertwined.

In this presentation in Mallorca, the exhibition proposal has the collaboration of the Palma City Council, through the Solleric cultural center, and the Marratxí City Council, which participates through the Sa Refinadora space.

A media lumbre unfolds in four territories –Valencia, Mallorca, Aragon, and Catalonia– through four autonomous exhibitions that come together under the same conceptual framework: it is born in a large urban museum, IVAM, and expands between the urban and the rural in Mallorca; then it reconnects with the land and the landscape at the CDAN in Huesca and the Terra Museum in l'Espluga de Francolí (Tarragona), with activities planned between October and December 2026. The production has been carried out applying sustainability criteria: natural and non-polluting materials, reuse of elements, and elimination of international transport, among other measures.

Es Baluard

On the terraces of Es Baluard, the artist Lucía Loren presents a series of specific interventions conceived for the museum's context. Eleven artists participate in this venue: Ricardo Calero, Andrea Canepa, Tonina Crespí, Julie C. Fortier, Teresa Lanceta, Lucía Loren, Teresa Matas, Lara Ordóñez, Núria Riaza, Belén Rodríguez and Cecilia Vicuña.

Casal Solleric

At Casal Solleric, 30 artists participate: Pilar Albarracín, Javier Bravo de Rueda, Susana Cámara Leret, Carolina Caycedo, Olga Diego, Ana Esteve Llorens, Antonio Fernández Alvira, Marta Font, Gloria Godínez, Cara Holmes, Noemí Iglesias Barros, Cecilia Jurado Chueca, Teresa Lanceta, Glenda León, Sandra Mar, Laura Mema, Adriana Meunié, Asunción Molinos Gordo, Xavier Monsalvatje, Sonia Navarro, Carla Nicolás, Albert Pinya and Joan Pere Català Roig, Gema Polanco, Alex Reynolds, Laura Segura, Isabel Servera, Ona Trepat Rubirola, Sarah Viguer Cebrià and Concha Ybarra.

Sa Refinadora

At Sa Refinadora, the project presents a series of interventions by Teresa Matas constructed from textile materials, an introspective work that transforms the act of sewing into a form of thought capable of questioning experiences of pain and vulnerability from a poetic and material dimension.