Artium Museoa, Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country presents the exhibition Juana Cima. A Dissident View [A3 Gallery, until 30 August 2026], an overview of the production of the artist Juana Cima (Caibarién, Cuba, 1951) as seen through a journey shaped by the intersection of her Caribbean memory, her training in the Basque country and an exploratory spirituality, anticipating key debates on identity, ecology and gender ever since the late 1970s. Artium Museoa has published a new issue of its #Hitzak series to accompany the exhibition, featuring an extensive text by Garazi Ansa-Arbelaiz (Oiartzun, 1989), the exhibition’s curator. The exhibition opens tomorrow, Saturday, at 12 pm.

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Artium Museum presents Juana Cima. A Dissident View, an exhibition that offers an insight into a way of life, the exploration of a journey shaped by the intersection of her Caribbean memory, her training in the Basque Country and an exploratory spirituality, anticipating key debates on identity, ecology and gender ever since the late 1970s. Juana Fernández Cima (Caibarién, Cuba, 1951) emerges as a unique voice that constructs aesthetic universes of radical, poetic dissent in which creation and life intertwine to the point of indissolubility.

During her period of greatest public visibility (1977-1997), her works were added to various collections, including those of the Basque Government, Bizkaia Provincial Council and Vitoria-Gasteiz City Council. However, her formal freedom, emotional openness and uncompromising approach to exploring identity placed her on the margins of the dominant canon. After deliberately withdrawing from the exhibition circuit – although not from production – her work was progressively excluded from the hegemonic narrative. This exhibition seeks to challenge that absence.

Structured around five territories – Bilbao: the first territory of desire and protest; Mythical territories and ecofeminist awareness; Island identity and Mediterranean knowledge; The spiritual path through India and Buddhism; and Mountain retreat – the exhibition traces a journey through the artist’s production. These reveal a profound ethic of relating to others – human, plant or animal – generated from otherness that permeates her entire practice, intertwining thought, existence and creation.

Juana Cima (Caibarién, Cuba, 1951) began her artistic training in Oviedo. After studying at the Higher School of Applied Arts and training with Higinio del Valle, she enrolled in the Higher School of Fine Arts in Bilbao in 1975, specialising in painting and printmaking. She obtained her degree in 1987 after the centre had become a faculty. Her most active artistic period was between 1977 and 1997, a time when she participated in important competitions in the Basque Country and received significant awards, thereby consolidating her professional standing. In the early 1980s, she collaborated with the Bizkaia Women’s Assembly, making a significant contribution to the iconography of the feminist movement. At the same time, she pursued an extensive teaching career at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) from 1981 to 2014, initially at the Teacher Training College and subsequently at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Leioa. In 1997, she withdrew from the exhibition circuit and, after completing her academic career, settled in a studio in the countryside where she continues to work privately and independently.

Artium Museoa has published a new issue of its #Hitzak series to accompany the exhibition, featuring an extensive article about the artist’s career written by Garazi Ansa-Arbelaiz (Oiartzun, 1989), the exhibition’s curator.

The official opening of the exhibition, which will run in the museum’s A3 Gallery until 30 August, will be held tomorrow, Saturday, at 12 pm, with free admission until full capacity is reached.

[Image: ¿Familia? ¿Amigas? Juana Cima, 1981. Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country Collection. Photo: Nuria González]