Art Madrid'23 – 4th edition of MULAFEST Urban Culture festival in Ifema

There is only one place where skaters, tattoo artists, graffiti and underground art lovers meet each other, a site with delicious Street Food and concerts of electronic music, rap, breakdance sessions ... That place is the MULAFEST, hot spot of urban culture and that its last edition gathered more than 30,000 people in the space of the IFEMA Trade Fair.
 
MULAFEST opens this Thursday 25 to Sunday 28 will delight lovers of street culture, street art, alternative music, engine and ink and also with novelties.
 
This year the Festival opens GALLERY MULAFEST, a new space for underground galleries of Madrid, six specialists in urban art, urban installation and illustration as Swinton & Grant, Espositivo, Gunter Gallery, La Fiambrera, Combustión Espontánea and creative hubs as Espacio Oculto and El Keller that will display the work of several artists such as E1000, Boamistura, Sabez, Ivan Solves and DosJotas. In addition, it will be presented the collective mural made by Ricardo Cavolo with more than 100 people last year.
Cavolo is also one of the illustrators who, during the exhibition "Zurbarán: a new look" at the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum, will revisit one of the masterpieces of the Baroque, the "Santa Casilda" (1630 1635), with different styles and contemporary readings. There will be plenty of graffiti battles: 2 artists, 6 colors and six minutes; or the urban art workshops for children.
In the musical section will be concerts by Jon Hopkins, Hudson Mohawke, 2ManyDJs or the British pop band Is Tropical. And if among tattoo, parkour, skate and dance you do not find place to keep the money, do not worry, they have thought about it and have the smart bracelet "Cashless", a system that will facilitate entry and which also you can pay all your and beverage purchases. Happy MULA!

 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.