The contemporary art scene in Madrid, like the city itself, never stops evolving. Art Madrid, now in its twentieth edition, taking place from March 5 to 9 at the Glass Gallery of the Palacio de Cibeles, not only showcases the latest artistic trends but also invites us to question how we inhabit the world.

Miska-Mohmmed. Suburbs. 2022. Courtesy of OOA Gallery.

After a year of dedicated work organizing this new edition, we find ourselves at the peak of the process: the fair is about to begin. Having overcome the most challenging stages, we are fully aware of our mission—to be the platform that connects a vast diversity of artists with the public. We want their voices to reach you, whether through our communication efforts or your visit to the fair. This year, Art Madrid brings together nearly two hundred artists from twenty-seven countries, represented by thirty-four galleries from ten nations. From Taiwan to Mexico; from Cuba to Portugal; from Italy to Brazil; from Japan to Spain—tracing a route through the Dominican Republic, Peru, Germany, South Africa, France, the United Kingdom, Colombia, Uruguay, Venezuela, Belgium, Poland, the Congo, the Netherlands, Morocco, Argentina, Slovakia, Sudan, Austria, and Serbia. The wealth and diversity we are exposed to over these five days indicate that today's maps are shifting—or changing color, as the troubadour sings in that song. We are no longer talking only about physical borders; today's maps are fluid and transitory. They represent our identity, our memory, and our human connections.

Ruddy Taveras. The Key to the treasure. 2024. Courtesy of Galería Luisa Pita.

The artists at Art Madrid, through works ranging from painting to installation, invite us to explore this uncertainty, to question ourselves, and, above all, to discover new possibilities.

Historically, maps have been tools for understanding space and locating ourselves in the world. However, today more than ever, those maps, like the territories they represent, are open to question—they have mutated, digitized, and fragmented. And as this happens, art continues to be the medium through which, paradoxically, we can find points of reference, direction, and meaning. Art Madrid, like other major events that reflect the pulse of contemporary art, is not immune to this reconfiguration.

Khalid El Bekay. Africa. Diptych. 2024. Courtesy of Galería Espiral.

In a sector that sometimes falls into inertia, we ask ourselves how to bring together so many perspectives, styles, and discourses in the same space for five days. That question leads us to a broader reflection on the geographical and ideological boundaries we inhabit today.

The thirty-four participating galleries introduce us to a universe of creators who, though diverse in technique and approach, share a common concern: the need to reinterpret the world from new perspectives. What once seemed immutable is now in constant flux. Globalization, technology, politics, and the climate crisis have altered the maps that once guided us. But in every change, there is an opportunity—a territory for creation. And that is where art comes in: as a vehicle for imagining new cartographies.

Maps, like identities, are constructions in constant evolution. Instead of marking borders, art today invites us to erase them. With more than thirty international galleries in attendance, Art Madrid reinforces its global character and its ability to transcend geography. Here, artists do not work on pre-existing maps; they reinvent them with each creation.

Francesca Poza. Emotions. 2024. Courtesy of Galería Alba Cabrera.

The works presented at the fair are not confined to a single medium. Through painting, sculpture, installation, and new technologies, artists explore how we position ourselves in a world where traditional structures are increasingly fluid. They do not seek easy answers but pose essential questions: What does it mean to belong to a territory today? How do globalization, the climate crisis, and the digital era affect us?

Art Madrid becomes a space where creators engage with the major questions of our time—from the geopolitical to the emotional. Their works are not just meant to be contemplated; they provoke, shake, and transform.

Okuda San Miguel. Born to Be an Angel. 2023. Courtesy of 3 Punts Galería.

The borders of art, like those of maps, are no longer fixed. That is the challenge the fair presents this year: to question them, expand them, and redefine the role of art in a constantly changing world.

In this reconfiguration, Art Madrid positions itself as a space where the voices of contemporary art help us redraw the map of humanity, both in its physical and emotional dimensions. Because today, true borders are not just geographical—they are also cultural, digital, and symbolic. And being an open window to that experimental exercise that is making art, is precisely the space where those borders can be subverted and even crossed.

Daniel Barrio. Guest artist of the third edition of OPEN BOOTH. Courtesy of the artist.

DESPIECE. PROTOCOLO DE MUTACIÓN

As part of the Art Madrid’26 Parallel Program, we present the third edition of Open Booth, a space conceived as a platform for artistic creation and contemporary experimentation. The initiative focuses on artists who do not yet have representation within the gallery circuit, offering a high-visibility professional context in which new voices can develop their practice, explore forms of engagement with audiences, and consolidate their presence within the current art scene. On this occasion, the project features artist Daniel Barrio (Cuba, 1988), who presents the site-specific work Despiece. Protocolo de mutación.

Daniel Barrio’s practice focuses on painting as a space for experimentation, from which he explores the commodification of social life and the tyranny of media approval. He works with images drawn from the press and other media, intervening in them pictorially to disrupt their original meaning. Through this process, the artist opens up new readings and questions how meaning is produced, approaching painting as a space of realization, therapy, and catharsis.

Despiece. Protocolo de mutación is built from urban remnants, industrial materials, and fragments of history, inviting us to reflect on which memories we inherit, which we consume, and which ones we are capable of creating. Floors, walls, and volumes come together to form a landscape under tension, where the sacred coexists with the everyday, and where cracks matter more than perfection.

The constant evolution of art calls for ongoing exchange between artists, institutions, and audiences. In its 21st edition, Art Madrid reaffirms its commitment to acting as a catalyst for this dialogue, expanding the traditional boundaries of the art fair context and opening up new possibilities of visibility for emerging practices.

Despiece. Protocolo de mutación emerges from a critical and affective impulse to dismantle, examine, and reassemble what shapes us culturally and personally. The work is conceived as an inseparable whole: an inner landscape that operates as a device of suspicion, where floors, walls, and volumes configure an ecosystem of remnants. It proposes a reading of history not as a linear continuity, but as a system of forces in permanent friction, articulating space as an altered archive—a surface that presents itself as definitive while remaining in constant transformation.

The work takes shape as a landscape constructed from urban waste, where floors, walls, and objects form a unified body made of lime mortar, PVC from theatrical signage, industrial foam, and offering wax. At the core of the project is an L-shaped structure measuring 5 × 3 meters, which reinterprets the fresco technique on reclaimed industrial supports. The mortar is applied wet over continuous working days, without a pursuit of perfection, allowing the material to reveal its own character. Orbiting this structure are architectural fragments: foam blocks that simulate concrete, a 3D-printed and distorted Belvedere torso, and a wax sculptural element embedded with sandpaper used by anonymous workers and artists, preserving the labor of those other bodies.

A white wax sculptural element functions within the installation as a point of sensory concentration that challenges the gaze. Inside it converge the accumulated faith of offering candles and the industrial residues of the studio, recalling that purity and devotion coexist with the materiality of everyday life. The viewer’s experience thus moves beyond the visual: bending down, smelling, and approaching its vulnerability transforms perception into an intimate, embodied act. Embedded within its density are sanding blocks used by artists, artisans, and laborers, recovered from other contexts, where the sandpaper operates as a trace of the effort of other bodies, following a protocol of registration with no autobiographical intent.

Despiece. Protocolo de mutación addresses us directly, asking: which memory do we value—the one we consume, or the one we construct with rigor? The audience leaves behind a purely contemplative position to become part of the system, as the effort of moving matter, documentary rigor, and immersive materiality form a body of resistance against a mediated reality. The project thus takes shape as an inner landscape, where floor, surface, and volume articulate an anatomy of residues. Adulteration operates as an analytical methodology applied to the layers of urban reality, intervening in history through theatrical and street advertising, architectural remnants, and administrative protocols, proposing that art can restore the capacity to build one’s own memory, even if inevitably fragmented.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

DANIEL BARRIO (1988, Cuba)

Daniel Barrio (Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1988) is a visual artist whose practice articulates space through painting, understanding the environment as an altered archive open to critical intervention. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Cienfuegos (2004–2008), specializing in painting, and later at the Madrid Film School (ECAM, 2012–2015), where he studied Art Direction. His methodology integrates visual thinking with scenographic narrative.

His trajectory includes solo exhibitions such as La levedad en lo cotidiano (Galería María Porto, Madrid, 2023), Interiores ajenos (PlusArtis, Madrid, 2022), and Tribud (Navel Art, Madrid, 2019), as well as significant group exhibitions including Space is the Landscape (Estudio Show, Madrid, 2024), Winterlinch (Espacio Valverde Gallery, Madrid, 2024), Hiberia (Galería María Porto, Lisbon, 2023), and the traveling exhibition of the La Rioja Young Art Exhibition (2022).

A member of the Resiliencia Collective, his work does not pursue the production of objects but rather the articulation of pictorial devices that generate protocols of resistance against the flow of disposable images. In a context saturated with immediate data, his practice produces traces and archives what must endure, questioning not the meaning of the work itself but the memory the viewer constructs through interaction—thus reclaiming sovereignty over the gaze and inhabiting ruins as a method for understanding the present.