Violeta Janeiro

In 2022, 41 contemporary art curators, researchers, and museum directors from 24 different countries were awarded to attend the CIMAM 2022 Annual Conference. The CIMAM 2022 Annual Conference, titled "The Attentive Museum. Permeable Practices for a Common Ground", was held in Mallorca (Balearic Islands), Spain on 11–13 November, hosted by Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani de Palma.

Violeta Janeiro's Conference Report

Participating in the annual CIMAM conference 2022 has facilitated the meeting and exchange with colleagues whom I knew through their work, but not in person. Listening to and exchanging ways of doing things within the art system reminds us that we must continue to insist on how to make room, within institutions, for a social thought that, because of its radical nature, is generally confined to the margins.

This CIMAM meeting has also facilitated, not only the exchange with Oslo and Chile for example, but also with what is closer to home, as I enjoyed the exchange with Rosa Maria Subirana Torrent, and thus continued to deepen my interest in a very specific memory, which is none other than that of a generation of women born in the 1930s and 1940s, a generation of women who were affected by a conflict that divided Spain in two and whose trauma we have not yet revisited. Inhabiting the past and its ghosts from the memory that only they treasure, makes us see and understand them as power, and not from vulnerability, which is the place reserved by the system for the elderly. Perhaps, for this reason, I was particularly touched by Sethembile Msezane's presentation, and her plea of "The Seed is a Memory of the Fruit".

I believe that at CIMAM, something very beautiful has been formed, beyond the professionalization of the curators, and this has been the complicity that we have generated among Spanish curators of my generation. Complicity has developed into friendship and mutual support.

The event itself became more and more interesting as the days went by. I am very grateful for this opportunity and very surprised by the generosity of the organisers who are part of the committee, and those who have contributed from the city of Palma de Mallorca. Thank you all.