From June 13th to 16th, 2019, Salamanca will be the scene of the 4th edition of the Luz y Vanguardias festival, which makes the city a large-scale projection screen for video-mapping works and a meeting place for more innovative art.

Plaza Mayor of Salamanca during the festival of 2018

The idea started four years ago with the desire to turn Salamanca into a focus of artistic attention that went beyond the undeniable historical value of the city. The initiative is a proposal of coexistence between the past and the future, a project based on innovation to open an intercultural dialogue over time using the city itself as a field of work.

In this edition, the festival divides into four sections. First, a program to host specific video-mapping projects created exclusively for the occasion, which will be screened on the façade of the city hall, the new cathedral, the university and the Enrique Estevan bridge. There is also a section for young talents to show the works of students of the University of Salamanca. Third, an international video-art contest involving artists from 14 countries (Germany, Bulgaria, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Japan, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Thailand, Ukraine, United Kingdom and Spain), whose works will be seen on the facade of the city hall, in the Plaza Mayor. And, finally, a parallel program, "+ Luz", with the collaboration of other agents of contemporary art such as the DA2 contemporary art centre, the Espacio Nuca multidisciplinary space, the Venancio Blanco Foundation and the cultural space La Salchichería. As a novelty, + Luz will add this year the participation of the Museum of Automotive History of Salamanca and the School of Art and Superior of Conservation and Restoration of Salamanca.

For four days, Salamanca becomes an interactive city, full of colours and light. Besides, this year has two exceptional ambassadors as guest artists: the multimedia artist and National Photography Award José Manuel Ballester, and the experimental creator who plays with visual projections, Javier Riera.

Furthermore, this year, the festival has been selected to participate in the international iMap Bucharest contest, which annually selects the best proposals from around the world working in this discipline.

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.