Art Madrid, committed to creating a discursive platform for artists working within the field of performance and action art, presents Abierto Infinito: lo que el cuerpo recuerda, a proposal inspired by Erving Goffman’s ideas in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Amorrortu Editores, Buenos Aires, 1997).

The project unfolds within a theoretical framework that directly engages with these premises, conceiving social interaction as a stage of carefully modulated performances designed to influence others’ perceptions. Goffman argues that individuals deploy both verbal and involuntary expressions to guide the interpretation of their behavior, sustaining roles and façades that define the situation for those who observe.

In this sense, the invited artists will construct micro-scenarios in which gestures, postures, and bodily movements function as performative “fronts,” shaping the framework of perception and meaning for the audience. These actions dramatize everyday experience, offering idealized or heightened interpretations of the relationship between body, space, and temporality, while certain elements — invisible effort, internal tensions, contradictions — remain partially concealed, generating deeper layers of meaning and resonance.

In line with Goffman, performance operates within the tension between idealized representation and real effort, between what is visible and what remains silent. The artists manage the information they convey, selecting what is shown and what is concealed, articulating strategies of presence that may reveal or disguise power, vulnerability, resistance, or intimacy. In this context, idealization implies the construction of a performative language capable of foregrounding values, tensions, and relational possibilities, exposing the poetic density of the everyday and, if one wishes, breaking the barrier of opacity that shapes our behavior in “real” daily life.

Although the series focuses on the notions of body ↔ memory ↔ representation ↔ presence, it seeks to expand its horizon, conceiving performance as an act that reveals invisible bonds and tensions traversing bodies, objects, and contexts. Within this network of walls, stands, and corridors, parallels emerge as the Galería de Cristal becomes a mirror of aesthetic experiences: a space beyond the strictly artistic sphere temporarily inhabited by the ephemeral presence of contemporary art, as occurs within the context of the fair.

The body — the first territory of all representation — precedes both word and learned gesture. Human experience, conscious and unconscious alike, is inscribed within it. Abierto Infinito: lo que el cuerpo recuerda departs from this premise: representation inhabits existence itself, and life, understood as a succession of representations, transforms the body into a space of constant negotiation over who we are. In this passage, boundaries blur; the individual opens toward the collective, and the ephemeral acquires symbolic dimension. By inhabiting this interstice, performance simultaneously reveals the fragility of identity and the strength that emerges from encounter with others.

INVITED ARTISTS

COLECTIVO LA BURRA NEGRA (Málaga, 2024)

La Burra Negra is a nomadic Action Art collective based in Málaga, founded in 2024 following its first residency in Totalán. It is self-managed by Ascensión Soto Fernández, Gabriela Feldman de la Rocha, Sasha Camila Falcke, Sara Gema Domínguez Castillo, Sofía Barco Sánchez, and Regina Lagos González, six creators from diverse backgrounds who met at the Hospital de Artistas of La Juan Gallery.

The collective brings together professionals from jewelry, painting, performing arts, music, dance, cultural mediation, and cultural management. Its activities include an annual residency in Totalán, the production of performative works, cultural mediation, and site-specific interventions. Since its creation, it has participated in the Periscopio Conference at La Térmica, presented A granel at the MVA in Málaga, carried out various actions in Totalán — most recently during its second annual residency — and taken part with its own proposals in Roger Bernat’s performance Desplazamiento del Congreso de los Diputados in Madrid.

Colectivo La Burra Negra presents at Art Madrid’26 its performance: ALTA FACTURA

The project forms part of a performative investigation that questions exhibition frameworks and the hierarchies of value that shape artistic creation. Through textile language and the body as a surface of inscription, the collective examines the tension between process and result, craft and spectacle, focusing on what the cultural system tends to conceal: invested time, wear, fragility, and the manual labor that sustains every work. Within this framework, the fashion runway appears as a symbolic structure condensing brilliance, consumption, and final product, becoming the point of departure for its subversion.

In this context, Alta Factura shifts attention to the seams — both literal and metaphorical — that usually remain in the shadows backstage. Through conceptual textile pieces, the performance exposes the rigor of craft and the artist’s vulnerability, transforming the runway into a critical space where process becomes the protagonist. By making visible the joints, adjustments, and traces of making, the work reclaims the value of the invisible and confronts the viewer with the material and affective conditions that sustain contemporary artistic practice.

ROCÍO VALDIVIESO (Tucumán, Argentina, 1994)

Rocío Valdivieso is an artist, researcher, and cultural manager. She is currently a PhD candidate in Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid and holds a Master’s degree in Research in Artistic Practices from the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM). She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the National University of Tucumán and was a Fundación Carolina fellow between 2022 and 2023.

She currently coordinates Errática Laboratorio de procesos and Clínica de obra, alongside Romina Casile, in Madrid. She was part of the PEEPA 2023 Program at Matadero Madrid’s Center for Artistic Residencies, mentored by Dora García, Cabello/Carceller, and Isabel Marcos. She completed the 2021/22 Artists Program at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires.

Among her solo exhibitions are El orden de las virtudes (2022), Pintura plegaria (2021), and Teoría de lo involuntario (2019) in Tucumán, Argentina. She has participated in group exhibitions including Aura latente at Espacio Amazonas, the closing event of the PEEPA Program at Matadero Madrid, and Ceder una huella in Cuenca, Spain. Since 2013, she has participated in various educational programs and frequently writes texts accompanying art exhibitions. She is a founding member and former secretary of the board of the Association of Visual Arts Workers of Tucumán (TAViT).

Rocío Valdivieso presents at Art Madrid’26 her performance: OSCURECER UN PAPEL

Oscurecer un papel is part of a series of actions in which reading is constructed through repetition, memorization, and a degree of improvisation. A non-linear reading emerges from a written text that transforms when spoken aloud, shifting its form and meaning in the very act of utterance. The texts stem from research into materiality, space, and the relationships between body and matter, as well as writing, sculpture, and the exploration of voice and orality.

The material used to construct the piece consists of purchase receipts accumulated over time. The printed text on them, together with the act of bringing them close to a heat source — triggering the reaction of thermal paper — generates meanings linked to consumption, record-keeping, and wear.

AMANDA GATTI (Porto Alegre, Brasil, 1996)

Amanda Gatti is an artist and researcher whose practice unfolds across performance, video, photography, and installation. She explores the intersections between body, object, and space, investigating how we occupy — and are occupied by — the spaces that surround us. Drawing from experiences of displacement and observations of domestic and urban environments, her work conceives the body as mediator and archive, transforming found objects, spatial arrangements, and everyday gestures into ephemeral architectures and relational situations.

She completed a Master’s in Scenic Practice and Visual Culture at Museo Reina Sofía/UCLM (Spain, 2023) and holds a degree in Audiovisual Production from PUCRS (Brazil, 2018). Her work has been presented at institutions and contexts such as Museo Reina Sofía, Fundación Antonio Pérez, Galería Nueva, CRUCE, and Teatro Pradillo, as well as in exhibitions and festivals in Brazil, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She currently resides in Madrid, with secondary bases in Brazil and the United Kingdom.

Amanda Gatti presents at Art Madrid’26 her performance: TRAYECTORIA

This performance continues the artist’s long-term research with objects found in public space: obsolete fragments, remnants of everyday use, and discarded materials that, once painted blue, acquire renewed visibility and an autonomous sculptural condition. These materials form an archive activated through gesture and displacement.

In Trayectoria, the artist proposes to traverse the fair’s main corridor while dragging a large group of these objects, linked together and tied to her shoelaces. The journey transforms this transit area into an active space in which body and materials generate new forms. The objects function as extensions of the moving body: they tense, divert, slow down, and reconfigure each step. The action explores the coexistence between the durable and the ephemeral, between what has been discarded and what insists on remaining. It approaches transit as the simultaneous activation of the material and immaterial, proposing an encounter between gesture, the sculptural, and all that continues to accompany us even after having been left behind.

JIMENA TERCERO (Madrid, 1998)

Jimena Tercero is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice — developed through video, performance, and painting — investigates the limits of identity in relation to the human body. Her work explores concepts such as memory, tangibility, and play, delving into subconscious pain inscribed in bodily memory.

She trained in painting with Lola Albín and in analog photography in Cambridge (2014). Between 2018 and 2020, she specialized in audiovisual practice, training as a filmmaker alongside figures such as director Víctor Erice and the production company El Deseo. She later completed a Master’s in Creative Direction at ELISAVA and developed her performative practice at La Juan Gallery.

She directed works such as Private (2016) and Paranoid (2021), presented at Galería Aspa Contemporary. She continued this line of inquiry in Yo mi me conmigo (2023), presented at Teatros del Canal; Inside Voices (2021), filmed at Conde Duque with the guidance of Itziar Okariz; and La última regla at La Juan Gallery. In 2026, she premieres the documentary Contando Ovejas, a portrait of two shepherds in Majadahonda reflecting on rural memory and its relationship with territory and time.

Jimena Tercero presents at Art Madrid’26 her performance: OFF LINE

OFF LINE is a performative piece that reflects on how the digital era is transforming the body’s relationship with the world and with others. Interaction is increasingly constructed through screens and interfaces, and identity shifts toward the virtual, subordinating physical experience to digital representation. In this context, the body becomes fragile: it loses density, memory, and active presence, becoming a support for information or image.

Hyperconnectivity and fragmented attention generate an increasingly inert corporeality, characterized by reduced spontaneous movement and diminished direct sensory interaction. This raises fundamental questions: how is presence redefined when our relationship with the world depends on technological mediation? What will happen to bodily experience in a future in which virtuality predominates over the physical?

There is a risk of progressive bodily passivity: bodies that remain still, whose activity is determined by devices, and whose memory is externalized into digital records. The fragmentation of physical experience and the primacy of technological representation create a scenario in which the body, although visible, is displaced from its original function as an agent of perception and action. This conceptual framework invites reflection on how digitalization affects corporeality, memory, and social relations, as well as on the vulnerability and inertia that traverse bodies in increasingly technologized environments.

PERFORMANCES:

Wednesday, March 4 | 7:00 PM — Colectivo La Burra Negra. Performance: Alta Factura

Thursday, March 5 | 7:00 PM — Rocío Valdivieso. Performance: Oscurecer un papel

Friday, March 6 | 7:00 PM — Amanda Gatti. Performance: Trayectoria

Saturday, March 7 | 7:00 PM — Jimena Tercero. Performance: OFF LINE

Art Madrid celebrates its twenty-first edition, consolidating itself as a platform for visibility and dialogue for national and international galleries and artists during Madrid Art Week. In this context, the fair renews its commitment to experimentation and to the inclusion of artistic practices that challenge conventional art market formats. The integration of the Performance Cycle — now in its third edition — reflects this institutional commitment to generating a space that fosters the production of live artistic experiences.

The Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles, the fair’s venue, thus becomes an ideal environment in which architecture and the event’s own dynamics enhance the ephemeral and relational character of performance.

With this initiative, Art Madrid reaffirms its role as an active agent in the construction of a plural artistic ecosystem, committed to presence, research, and dialogue as fundamental axes of contemporary art.

ART MADRID CLOSES ITS 21ST EDITION AS A KEY EVENT OF MADRID ART WEEK

The Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles hosted the 21st edition of Art Madrid from March 4 to 8, once again consolidating its role as one of the must-see events of Madrid Art Week. Over the course of five days, the fair brought together 35 national and international galleries and more than 200 artists, turning the venue into a meeting point for gallerists, collectors, professionals, and lovers of contemporary art.

Throughout its trajectory, Art Madrid has built a distinct identity, with a constant focus on giving visibility to both emerging and established galleries and on opening contemporary art to diverse audiences. Rather than being structured around a single curatorial line, the fair embraced a plural proposal, respecting the unique DNA of each exhibitor.

Art Madrid’26 presented a Gallery Program distinguished by the diversity of artistic proposals and languages, encouraging dialogue between different generations and contemporary practices. Painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, installation, and new hybrid forms coexisted in an edition that once again confirmed the dynamism of today’s art scene

During the days of the fair, nearly 20,000 visitors explored the booths of the participating galleries and enjoyed a parallel program that expanded the experience beyond the traditional exhibition format.

The Parallel Program: An Expanded Art Fair

The Parallel Program once again took center stage in the Art Madrid experience, activating the fair space through projects that explored new forms of interaction between artworks, artists, and the public.

Among the most notable initiatives was the performance series Open Infinite: What the Body Remembers, which presented a daily performative action at the fair featuring works by Colectivo La Burra Negra, Rocío Valdivieso, Amanda Gatti, and Jimena Tercero. The pieces incorporated the body as a critical device and a space of memory, reinforcing the presence of performance within Art Madrid’s programming.

The third edition of Open Booth presented Despiece. Protocolo de mutación, by Daniel Barrio, a site-specific project that transformed the booth into a landscape constructed from urban remnants and industrial materials. The installation invited visitors to physically engage with the work, creating an immersive experience within the exhibition space.

Meanwhile, Espacio Nebrija hosted the project Estancias transitorias (NotanIA SipedagogIE), a proposal by Nebrija University that reflected on Aesthetic Intelligence in the face of the growing dominance of algorithmic logic. The installation proposed a reclamation of gesture, materiality, and the time inherent to the creative process as dimensions that cannot be reduced to automation.

Lecturas. Curated Walkthroughs also returned, with itineraries designed by Zuriñe Lafón and Marisol Salanova that offered curatorial insights for exploring the fair from specific critical perspectives and expanding the visitor experience.

Patronage, Awards, and Acquisitions

Support for contemporary creation once again stood as one of the fair’s central pillars through the second edition of the Art Madrid Patronage Program, which recognizes the work of artists and strengthens the connections between galleries, collectors, and private entities.

On this occasion, the following awards were presented:

Cervezas Alhambra Emerging Artist Award Iyán Castaño, represented by Galería Arancha Osoro

One Shot Hotels Breakthrough Artist Award Joost Vandebrug, represented by KANT Gallery

In the Acquisition Awards category, several private collections incorporated works presented at the fair into their collections.

Studiolo Collection Roger Sanguino — DDR Art Gallery

Devesa Law Kim Han Ki — Banditrazos Gallery

E2IN2 Collection Albert Bonet — Inéditad Gallery

dn2 Collection Iván Baizán — Galería Arancha Osoro

These acquisitions reflect the private sector’s commitment to the development of contemporary art and contribute to advancing the professional trajectories of emerging and mid-career artists.

Collecting and Support for the Artistic Ecosystem

The promotion of collecting once again played a prominent role in this edition thanks to the One Shot Collectors program, which offered personalized advice to both new buyers and more experienced collectors, facilitating access to the contemporary art market and fostering direct relationships between artists, galleries, buyers, and collectors.

This program, together with the Patronage Program, continues to strengthen the professional ecosystem surrounding the fair and reinforce Art Madrid’s commitment to supporting contemporary creation.

Among the most notable sales were works by Antonio Ovejero, represented by CLC ARTE; Leticia Feduchi and Ángela Mena, represented by Galería Sigüenza; Idoia Cuesta and Iyán Castaño, represented by Galería Arancha Osoro; and Yasiel Elizagaray, represented by Nuno Sacramento Arte Contemporânea. Likewise, the proposals presented by Inéditad Gallery were very well received, with notable sales of works by artists Albert Bonet and Eduardo Urdiales, as well as Carmen Mansilla, who debuted at Art Madrid'26 and achieved a sold out.

The overall balance of the edition has been particularly positive, with sales reported by all 35 participating galleries, confirming the strong interest from collectors and the dynamism of the market throughout the fair. Among the galleries that recorded notable commercial activity are La Mercería (Valencia), LAVIO (Murcia–Shanghai), 3 Punts Galería (Barcelona), Galerie One (Paris), Shiras Galería (Valencia), Galería Rodrigo Juarranz (Aranda de Duero), Galería São Mamede (Lisbon), Yiri Arts (Taiwan), and Trema Arte Contemporânea (Lisbon), among others.

A Fair made possible thanks to Its network of Partners

The success of Art Madrid’26 has been made possible thanks to the support of its official sponsors: Cervezas Alhambra, One Shot Hotels, Liquitex, Universidad Nebrija, and Posca, as well as the trust of its collaborators: Asociación 9915, Colección Studiolo, E2IN2, Colección dn2, Devesa Law, Enviarte, Cova 13, and Vanille Bakery Lab & Café. The fair also benefits from the involvement of its media partners and the support of various cultural organizations, private collections, and institutions that contribute to strengthening the contemporary art ecosystem.

Art Madrid: A Future Full of Possibilities

After 21 years of history, Art Madrid continues to consolidate its position as a key event in the contemporary art calendar, both nationally and internationally. Its ability to bring together galleries, artists, collectors, and institutions reinforces its role as a space for encounter, exchange, and discovery. The fair maintains a steadily growing outlook, driven by a program that evolves each year and increasingly opens up to more innovative proposals.

Thank you for being part of the 21st edition of Art Madrid. Your support is essential for continuing to promote art and culture.