Where are you from?

Inaugural series of exhibitions at 20/21

2023 – 2025

‘Where are you from?’: a question we often use to initiate conversation at moments of first introduction. 

Although simple as it might sound, it is quite a loaded query, potentially deeply inquisitive, for how we answer it can reveal so much about ourselves and become an entryway to a dialogue that delves into our identity. Where we are from is not only a place when we consider how we define ourselves. Language and even the accent with which we speak it can reveal something beyond the singular locale of one’s birth or home but also the geographical path our lives have taken us. And often our cultural and familial backgrounds play an equal role in where we consider ourselves ‘from’ in a world that gets ever more demographically complex. Place, history, and language have a great influence on the broader sense of ‘where we are from’.

For this first series of exhibitions, 20/21 chooses this question as its conceptual theme, a form of introduction to the people of La Palma, both for its spirit of curiosity and its invitation to initiate dialogue. Beginning with the inaugural presentation and changing in sequence every six months, the temporary shows will approach art from these defining perspectives of identity: language (Contemporary Spanish Art), history (History: a microcosmic perspective) and place (Somewhere: Contemporary Landscape). And with each,  three independent exhibitions will also be introduced, unveiling them one at a time by thematically tying them into the respective themes (Spanish Art of the mid-20th century, Anselm Kiefer and Miquel Barceló), remaining permanently on view thereafter to serve as anchors to the Art experience at 20/21.