Territorios en tránsito at Es Baluard Museum

Anna Talens, Alegoría de la transitoriedad. “Almas y mareas” Series, 2025. Shell and glass beads, 10 x 20 x 12 cm. Courtesy of the artist. © of the work of art, Anna Talens, 2026. Photo: Juan García – IVAM

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hen Territorios en tránsito (Territories in Transit) opened its doors at the IVAM last February, a lighthouse beam lit the path through an exhibition that at times turned abyssal. From the subtle gestures of Anna Talens, in which a golden line articulated the space of a postcard or a wall, to the aquatic archaeologies of Mar Guerrero, the Mediterranean was a shared idea.

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Few exhibitions develop from such a clear notion of dialogue: between two artists, but also between two institutions. Months later, on the occasion of the recent Nit de l'Art, the exhibition arrived at Es Baluard Museu, where that same sea stops being a horizon and becomes a circle closing in on itself, like one more sweep of the lighthouse beam, illuminating this dialogue again in a different configuration. There is something reassuring about meeting works again in another space and under another light. The displacement is geographic, but also conceptual. What happens when an exhibition changes shores?

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The show, titled Entre el faro y el abismo (Between the Lighthouse and the Abyss), the first co-production of this new cycle between the IVAM and Es Baluard, brings together the practices of Anna Talens (Valencia, 1978) and Mar Guerrero (Mallorca, 1991), two artists whose research converges on the sea understood as a territory of transit, memory and possible questioning. In Mar Guerrero's sculptures, eroded plastics, driftwood and other materials gathered from the coast appear as witnesses to invisible trajectories. Like a secret cartography of materials, each sculpture preserves the memory of an uncertain journey. In Anna Talens's work, by contrast, the horizon ceases to be a physical limit and becomes a perceptual experience: an ever-changing line that organizes our relationship with space. At times, as in the piece Collar de sirena (Mermaid's Necklace, 2009), made from nets, rope and bells, that line closes in on itself like a mythological serpent.

Mar Guerrero, Materia abisal. Criatura núm. 29, 2026. Blown glass, dog hair, 40 x 30 x 20 cm. © of the work of art, Mar Guerrero, 2026. Photo: Juan García – IVAM

Anna Talens, Alba mobile, 2019. Gilded mirrors, motor and circular light. 30 elements of 77 x 53 cm each. Courtesy of the artist. © of the work of art, Anna Talens, 2026. Photo: Juan García – IVAM

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etween the two artists, a Mediterranean emerges that is far from any romantic reading: an aquatic body crossed by questions. After all, and perhaps this is why the dialogue between them flows so naturally, the sea acts as a kind of mirror: a changing echo that gives back what we are with the shifting of the tides. It is a meeting point, a place of drift and of the finding of certain materials, but also an experiential record that sets off reflections on our own position within this aquatic cartography. One in which shores and boundaries are constantly blurred, and where the remains of the Anthropocene are returned to the sand. The sea does this: it insistently reveals our disasters and our own condition.

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However, perhaps the most interesting aspect of this exhibition, curated by Alicia Ventura, lies not so much in the works as in the nature of the project itself. Accustomed to thinking of exhibitions as events tied to a single place, this co-production proposes a different logic. The exhibition does not end in Valencia in order to begin again in Mallorca. It continues. Its meaning is built precisely in the transit between the two institutions, which is part of a larger cycle: Territorios en tránsito, a platform for exchange and projection that connects artists from different institutional and geographic contexts.
There is something deeply Mediterranean in this way of understanding mobility. For centuries, the sea has functioned less as a border than as a network of exchange: of goods, languages, images and people. In that sense, the exhibition's journey ceases to be an organizational matter and becomes part of its own discourse. Itinerancy becomes an extension of the questions the show raises.

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At a time when museums are seeking new forms of collaboration, projects like this point in a promising direction. Sharing an exhibition does not mean only sharing resources. It also means sharing ways of producing knowledge, accepting that displacement transforms, and accepting that works are never read quite the same way when the territory from which they are observed changes.

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Territorios en tránsito: Entre el faro y el abismo (Territories in Transit: Between the Lighthouse and the Abyss) can be visited at Es Baluard Museu until February 28, 2027.

"After all, and perhaps this is why the dialogue between them flows so naturally, the sea acts as a kind of mirror: a changing echo that gives back what we are with the shifting of the tides."