Cortona On The Move

Since 2019, the IEB has maintained a collaboration agreement with the Cortona On The Move international photography festival to schedule an individual exhibition of photography by a Balearic author. The selection of the project is carried out through an open call and professional photographers from the Balearic Islands can submit a project that relates to the theme proposed by the festival for the program of exhibitions.

Cortona On The Move is celebrated in the Tuscan town of Cortona, in the province of Arezzo Protagonist since 2011 in the photographic production at an international level, the festival is a reference for photographers, curators, authors and critics, as well as for the public. Under the direction of Veronica Nicolardi and the artistic direction of Paolo Woods, it focuses on documentary narrative, applied to contemporary and socially relevant themes. Likewise, it carries out research on the evolution of the photographic language and favors the production and realization of original and unpublished content.

In the 2025 edition, the participating projects focus on the thematic focus "Come together" proposed by the festival. The Balearic project selected by the festival jury has been "Ca Sa Padrina", by Maya Valencia. The project revolves around the author's family home, in the Son Espanyolet neighborhood of Palma, Mallorca. For the photographer, the practice of photography becomes a dialogue between absence and healing and serves to reconcile with a space that is about to disappear. Maya Valencia sees the project as an act of resistance against the effects of gentrification, to preserve living memory and build coexistence spaces.

The photographic projects of Balearic artists shown in previous editions of the festival have been "La isla" by Beatriz Polo (2019), "Badlands" by Tomeu Coll (2022), "Enfoques bélicos del turismo: All inclusive" by Marina Planas (2023), and "Androids in the Woods" by Toni Amengual (2024).

Maya Valencia (Palma, Mallorca, 1994)

Graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Granada and in Artistic and Documentary Photography from EASD Serra i Abella (2019). She has completed the Creative Documentary and Contemporary Photography program at Fuga Foto and the Master in Art Direction in Publicity at the Barcelona School of Creativity.

Her photographic practice is articulated as a tool to question what we assume as normal and to explore human behavior in the face of these realities. Each project becomes a space for reflection, where the act of looking is transformed into a critical exercise about the way we inhabit the world.

During her training, she did an Erasmus stay at the Vilnius Academy of Arts (Lithuania), where she developed the project" Feel Yourself an Angel" (2018). Her final project "Memories of Belonging: Lietuvá" (2019) was selected by EL PROYECTOR of the Fundación Foto Colectania de Barcelona and for the portfolio reviews of the KBr Flama'24 of the Mapfre Photo Center Foundation.