Museum of Contemporary Art Helga de Alvear

I imagine the museum as an archipelago. It is not a continent, but an archipelago. […] Because, in the end, the idea [of a museum] today is to bring the world into contact with the world, to bring some of the world’s places into contact with other of world’s places. … We must multiply the number of worlds inside museums.

Édouard Glissant

The making of any building or structure—whether real or imaginary—requires a shaping of space. This conjures the idea of an archipelago, as defined by Édouard Glissant in his seminal text, Poetics of Relation (1990), wherein the author posits the archipelago as a group of islands without any centre, which suggests a network of the relations between the one and many.  Glissant names the relations between all things ‘the world,’ and R elation is the final quantity of all the pecularities of the world. The Relation is our way of approaching the other to attempt change through exchange, without getting lost or becoming denatured.

The exhibition, Can the Archipelago enter de Museum?, is the presentation of a museological project, as well as, the presentation of the philosophy of Helga de Alvear’s collection. The temptation to impose a singular narrative was challenged. Instead, this is an exhibition of images, of fragments in transition, of plural and complex worlds; and an exhibition that raises questions instead of proposing solutions.

The exhibition features a selection of works from the museum collection—including some works that were never exhibited—by artists from multiple contexts.

Can the Archipelago enter the Museum? forges a relationship between these works and the contemporary world with all of its urgencies and discontinuities.

This constellation of works invites the viewer to forge associations, and take a journey that transforms while developing a community of relations.

As part of the tribute to Helga de Alvear, the final chapter of the exhibition is entitled “New Islands for Helga: The Meaning of Abstraction”. It features a selection of pieces that exemplify Helga de Alvear’s passion for abstraction and colour, including some of the collector’s latest acquisitions and works that have never been exhibited before.

Works by Georg Baselitz, Ángela de la Cruz, Ignasi Aballí, Ugo Rondidone, Thomas Hirschhorn, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Daniel Buren, Haegue Yang, Etel Adnan, Rosemarie Trockel, Luc Tuymans, Francis Alÿs, Lygia Clarck, Walid Raad, Cristina Lucas and Carlos Bunga, among many others.