FOCUS with Alexandra van Dongen and Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy

Location: second-floor galleries, Kunstinstituut Melly
Free entrance, reservation required via the ticket link

Join us for FOCUS, a dive into our exhibitions together with special guests.

In this edition of FOCUS we welcome special guest Alexandra van Dongen, Curator of Historical Design at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen for a dive into our current Solo Duet exhibition of paintings by Pablo Castaneda. This FOCUS will investigate the provenance of objects, compositions, and film references in a program for all of those fascinated by art history, film and contemporary politics.

The exhibition, Border Autofictions, includes over forty paintings from 2006 to date, all of which depict imaginative scenes of Mexicali in Baja California on the Mexico/United States border. Many of the paintings feature particular objects and scenes that cite art history and film, as well as mundane objects of border life – from Hieronymous Bosch, to van Gogh to a local beer brand.

Van Dongen is renowned for her research into historical paintings, traced through the history of objects. Notably, van Dongen identified the earliest known presence of Arab ceramics in European art through detailed research into Jan Van Eyck’s The Three Mary’s at the Tomb (1430 – 1435). In a dynamic conversation, van Dongen will also be joined by Kunstinstituut Melly Director Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, who in fact grew up in Mexicali as well.