The Fundació Per Amor a l’Art (FPAA) has presented this morning in a press conference Sandra Guimarães, new artistic director of its art centre ‘Bombas Gens’ in Valencia.

Guimarães takes over from Nuria Enguita, after her departure new professional projects. This is the beginning of a new stage at ‘Bombas Gens’ of which the vice-president of FPAA, Susana Lloret, has given more details: “The Fundació Per Amor a l’Art is a living project. This means that it evolves and changes, but not in any old way, because its purpose is still very defined: to share the ‘Per Amor a l’Art Collection’ and to make as many people as possible aware of it by connecting them to art. In the search of this double purpose; to consolidate what is essential and to open ourselves to new horizons, today we present a new stage that starts and a new person that will drive it”.

According to Lloret, the new artistic director of ‘Bombas Gens’ arrives at a time when the art centre enjoys a recognized level of quality and prestige as a result of the excellent management of Enguita that it must maintain, while at the same time it seeks to reach new audiences and expand its international projection. This will be the main challenge that Guimarães will face. “She has proven experience, a long history, an international agenda, the ability to offer new and stimulating readings of the Per Amor a l’Art Collection, and also the magic ingredient: a lot of enthusiasm. With all this, she will surely achieve it.”, he added.

Sandra Guimarães has the support of the director of the FPAA Art Area, Vicent Todolí, who explained that he has followed the Portuguese woman’s solid career since its beginning: “Sandra began her career by doing an internship at Serralves when I was the director of that museum. Later she continued as a curator and when she went to the Remai Modern in Canada, I was part of the advisory board. She started the museum there and I really liked her presentation of the collection. I was also especially struck by the Rosa Barba exhibition that she curated… By this I mean that I have followed her career closely, that I know her work well, and that for all her experience accumulated in various institutions I think she is the ideal person to continue the work initiated by Nuria Enguita”.

In her first public appearance, Sandra Guimarães shared her motivation to take on the leadership of the Valencian art centre: “It is an immense privilege for me to accept this position. Bombas Gens has been one of the great successes of recent years in Spain and abroad. I thank José Luis Soler and Susana Lloret for their vision, their determined determination to serve art and artists, and to honour the direct experience of their work. The collection that has been created with the advice of Vicent Todolí is very stimulating and denotes a high degree of exigency. And the remarkable programme developed under the direction of Nuria Enguita is quite a challenge”.

Guimarães is leading Bombas Gens at a time when, she said, more than ever museums should act and show why they are needed. In this sense, she said she is looking forward to working with the team of the Valencian art centre to continue this effort, enabling the implementation of ambitious projects, providing transformative experiences to continue having a museum that is inclusive, artist-centered, active and that develops research at various levels. “I am also indebted to the inspiring artists I have worked with in recent years. I am very happy to bring that experience to ‘Bomba Gens’ and look forward to the challenge of taking the institution to the next chapter of its history,” he concluded.

BIO

Sandra Guimarães’ (Porto) career in the visual arts spans some 20 years and includes positions as curator at the Serralves Museum (Porto, Portugal) 1998-2010, as well as founding programme director and chief curator at Remai Modern (Saskatoon, Canada) 2015-2019. In 2018 she was a member of the nominating group for the ScotiaBank Photography Award (Toronto, Canada).

At Serralves, she worked with Vicent Todolí (founding director of the museum) and organized exhibitions of contemporary artists such as, Alvess, Artur Barrio, Thomas Hirschhorn, Cristina Iglesias, Barry Le Va and Dan Graham, among others. She has also been co-curator of the exhibition “The 80’s. A Topology”, with works by artists such as Miroslaw Balka, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Heimo Zobernig, Juan Muñoz, Cristina Iglesias, Julião Sarmento, Jimmie Durham, Thomas Schütte, Rosemarie Trockle, Isa Genzken, Rodney Graham, Marlene Dumas, Mona Hatoum, Luc Tuymans, Eugenio Dittborn, Louise Lawler, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, Stan Douglas, Robert Gober, Tony Cragg, Matt Mullican and David Hammons, among others.

At Remai Modern she co-curated the pre-launch programme of the museum, as well as its inaugural exhibition, “Field Guide”. The exhibition was completed with other projects such as “What Can I learn from you. What can you learn from me,” “Presence and production” by Thomas Hirschhorn, “Faces of Picasso, the collection selected by Ryan Gander,” by Ryan Gander, and “Determined by the River” by Tanya Lukin Linklater and Duane Linklater. The exhibition included around 80 artists such as Ian Wallace, Stan Douglas, Rodney Graham, Jeff Wall, John Baldessari, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Ahlam Shibli, Haegue Yang, Raqs Media Collective, RHQuatman, Rosemarie Trockel, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Gabriel Kuri, Walid Raad, Luc Tuymans, Francis Alys, Hito Steyerl, Kara Uzelman, Emily Carr and Daniel Steegman Mangrané, among others.

She has also curated solo exhibitions by Rosa Barba, Rikrit Tiravanija and Joan Jonas, and organized Jimmie Durham’s exhibition “At the Center of the World” with the Hammer Museum in collaboration with the Whitney Museum in New York and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Her training includes a Master’s degree in Art History and Archaeology (specialization in Modern and Contemporary Art), as well as a Master’s degree in Cultural Management, both from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium).

THE FOUNDATION FOR THE LOVE OF ART

The Fundació Per Amor a l’Art is a private and family foundation that carries out its triple activity, artistic, social and research, in the formerly rehabilitated Bombas Gens factory in Valencia. The Foundation develops its artistic aspect through Bombas Gens Centre d’Art, its work related to social integration is carried out from its Centre Jove and promotes through its Wilson Team the research and dissemination of rare diseases, especially Wilson’s disease.

For more information, please contact the Communication Manager: anavalls@bombasgens.com

More info in English: https://www.bombasgens.com/en/