SIMONE FATTAL
Julio González Prize 2024

With a forthcoming exhibition, Nov 28, 2024 – June 1, 2025
Institut Valencià d'Art Modern
Centre Julio González | Floor B, G1

SIMONE FATTAL has been awarded the Julio González International Prize 2024 for her contribution to contemporary art. To mark the occasion, IVAM will organize an exhibition curated by Nuria Enguita and Rafael Barber, which will review the main lines of Fattal's work. A catalogue will be published in conjunction with the exhibition, including texts by the curators and contributions from professionals such as Jacqueline Burckhardt and Omar Kholeif.

Fattal conceptualizes time as an elastic entity that transcends the distinctions between past, present, and future. Her work draws from mythology, spanning from ancient Egypt to Sunni mysticism and Greco-Roman tradition, creating archetypal figures that integrate historical narratives into the present.

Through mediums such as sculpture, painting, and photography, Fattal explores the boundaries of figuration, inspired by historical figures from the Mediterranean, creating a cosmogony of resilient bodies and architectures. Her sculptures, made of bronze, clay, or stoneware, evoke literature, Sumerian tales, Arab epics, and Sufi poetry. Angels, centaurs, heroes, and gods mingle with architectural ruins and figures of fruits and animals, alluding to the loss of historical sites such as Palmyra or Aleppo. These works, timeless and simultaneously archaic and modern, reflect on humanity and its place in the world and history.

More information is available on Institut Valencià d'Art Modern's website.