Last weekend Salamanca was filled with light. For the third year in a row, the festival “Luz y Vanguardias” flooded the façades of this city with projections and creations that generate a bridge between the past and the future, between historical heritage and contemporaneity.

The artworks are designed to be projected on the old town of Salamanca. The City Hall (Plaza Mayor), the Casa de las Conchas, the Plaza de Anaya next to the New Cathedral and the Church of the San Esteban Convent are some of the buildings selected for this edition. In addition, the festival is structured in four sections where both young talent and international studios can fit: the guest artists section, the contest section, the young creators' section and the “Luz+” program.

One of the highlights of the festival is the International Videomaping Contest for creative projects on the façade of the City Hall. This year there were records of participation, with works coming from all around the world: twenty-nine artists and studios from Spain, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Austria, Thailand, Canada, Mexico and Colombia. The work "Pneuma" of the studio VideomapingPro (Spain) has been the winner of this year, and the award of the public was granted to "R_Evolution", by the Mexican Jesús Gutiérrez Mercado.

To promote young talent, the festival dedicates a section to students of the fine and audiovisual arts of the universities of the city. The selected artworks are projected on the façade of the Casa de las Conchas. In this edition, 52 students participated with 35 proposals of different themes and techniques. For its part, the “Luz+” section opens the door to the creations of several art spaces in the city that deals with the concept of light.

The invited artists in this edition were Juan López (Alto Maliaño, Cantabria 1979), Eugenio Ampudia (Melgar, Valladolid, 1958), Darya von Berner (Mexico, 1960) and Charles Sandison (Scotland, 1969). The common characteristic of these creators is the connection of their work with the new technologies that result in installations, videos, projections and works in public spaces.

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.