The Antoni Miró Research Chair in Contemporary Art was established in 2015 to promote and contribute to the knowledge and dissemination of contemporary art, with a focus on artists from the Valencia Region. Intended as a platform for reflection and debate, the Research Chair also explores the connection between contemporary art, thinking and other artistic disciplines, such as literature, music or cinema, among others.
This year, with the support of the Valencia Region Government, the University of Alicante’s Antoni Miró Research Chair in Contemporary Art launched a grant programme to fund exhibitions. Three grants have been awarded to cover expenses for materials and the publication of catalogues. Between November 2024 and January 2025, there will be three consecutive exhibitions at the UA Museum’s Cub2 hall to show the work of each of the winners: Empar Santamarina, the “Passejades per Xàtiva amb Estellés” group and Claudia Pastomás.
The first of the projects was created by Empar Santamarina. Born in Valencia, where she lives and works, she has a long-standing career as a painter and sculptor, during which her style has evolved from abstract expressionism to minimalistic synthetism. After gaining extensive experience in landscape painting, the artist decided to take an experimental approach, blending different disciplines. At present, she mostly uses mixed techniques, with colour and texture as key elements and the introduction of a wide range of materials in her installations and ephemeral art projects.
Over the last few years, she has combined aspects of painting and volume to build her aesthetic discourse. This formal experience allows her to explore the tactile and visual qualities of materials, seen as artistic elements that are significant in themselves – nothing in them alludes to the creation of any kind of space, whether real or fictitious, in line with trends in optical art and kinetic art.
In EN CLAU FEMENINA (Som humans perquè som art) [A female perspective (We are humans because we are art)], Empar Santamarina blends different types of languages, two- and three-dimensional approaches and multiple art forms: installation, painting, sculpture and drawing. With these tools, she develops diverse spatial identities from a female perspective.
The artist is part of a cultural movement that hopes to shed light on women’s silent and silenced work in domestic environments and how they have contributed to creating the “home of time”. Through her experiments, principles of painting and volume are merged together into a consistent aesthetic discourse. Empar’s visual works are intended to open a dialogue between viewer, form and content.