PARALLEL PROGRAM CITY TERRITORY. ART MADRID'25

OPEN BOOTH X NEBRIJA UNIVERSITY

Art Madrid, in its 20th edition, presents a Parallel Program dedicated to the conceptual theme City Territory. The city, understood as a permeable organism and a topography of shared meanings, serves as the stage for a thoughtful exploration of the impact of art on the spaces we inhabit.

The second edition of Open Booth stands out as a platform for emerging talent, reinforcing its commitment to supporting the artists of the future. This year, Open Booth x Nebrija University offers students from the Fine Arts program the opportunity to experience an art fair firsthand, connecting them with collectors, curators, and gallerists while providing a space to showcase their work within the professional art circuit.

As part of this initiative, undergraduate students in Fine Arts at Nebrija University present Bajotierras/Sobrenubes (DEL OSO, UN PELO), a collective installation exploring the relationship between the city and its surrounding territory. Led by professor and artist Luis Gárciga Romay, and supported by Liquitex, the project investigates -through geometry, landscape, and scale- how environments transform and how we navigate the intersection between the urban and the natural.

With the backing of Liquitex, a leading brand in professional acrylics, Open Booth x Nebrija University continues to establish itself as a space for experimentation and visibility, bringing young artists closer to both the public and key figures in the art world.

Boceto para Bajotierras/Sobrenubes (DEL OSO, UN PELO). Ximena Couttolenc. Cortesía Universidad Nebrija.

BAJOTIERRAS/SOBRENUBES. (DEL OSO, UN PELO)

The project proposed by the students of the Fine Arts program at Nebrija University is a kind of TOTAL BOOTH, a cohesive space that, through collaboration and the exchange of ideas, reflects the collective potential of all participants, elevating the artwork to a new dimension."

Starting from the breadth and depth of the concepts of TERRITORY and CITY, they approach these notions in alliance with the two established poles while remaining open to the expressive possibilities of other scales and combinations that these concepts may evoke. Territory is the geopolitical manifestation of a way of inhabiting space, it is both here and there, shaping how life is organized. It is the stage where resources and hierarchical powers are dictated, interpreted, and transformed.

Boceto para Bajotierras/Sobrenubes (DEL OSO, UN PELO). Cortesía Universidad Nebrija.

Territory is not separate from the place of our emotions, exaltations, doubts, and hopes. Nor do its border confines distance themselves from the most abstract geometric expression. Sometimes a line delimits and marks, creates a corner, an inclined plane; it evokes an emotion, thus generating a vital region. The universality of geometry allows us to position, locate, confront, critique, and propose. Lines, areas, volumes are imbued with colors according to the contexts we live in and the paradigms we uphold. The horizon line and our existential perspectives are interrupted by the natural or built landscape, bringing to our feet a shore and, with it, floating objects, between drift and design. A controlled avalanche, sometimes in its causes, at other times, in its consequences.

Boceto para Bajotierras/Sobrenubes (DEL OSO, UN PELO). Cortesía Universidad Nebrija.

WHAT SHAPES US. Conformity and Re-formation

The city is divine and underground, buried and celestial, made simultaneously of the lightness of the superfluous and the dense gravity. It lives, sometimes hibernates, but always promises. Between conformity and ambition, we achieve something: a good corner between the terrace and the basement, a good "from here onward".

The Open Booth is organized into four interconnected spaces: Avalanche, inspired by the mountains and the river, with objects shaped by the passage of time; Constelar, where floating lamps evoke memory and aspirations; Mar(ejada) Madrid, a conceptual shore designed for contemplation and dialogue; and A Bear Called Tergiverso, a series of pieces that reinvent the city as an ever-changing organism.

The following participants are representing Universidad Nebrija in Open Booth: Blanca Lanaspa, Héctor Mendoza, Diana Díaz, Ainara Asensio, Rita Gentile, Ximena Couttolenc, Laura Nogales, Michelle Camhi, María Lucía Patiño, Andrea Bornstein, Andrea Manjón, Alis Qiu, Carlota Arias, Inés López, Jaime Muñoz, Marialex Arcaya, Melina Fernández, Mónica Escartín, Rebeca Rodríguez, and Belén Sierra.

Boceto para Bajotierras/Sobrenubes (DEL OSO, UN PELO). Cortesía Universidad Nebrija.

In Madrid, the Fine Arts students at Nebrija University question and propose the MATERIALITY and MATERIALS of a constellation where the notions of territory and city coexist with great presence, yet with a subtle protagonism. Procedures, methods, processes; the ways in which we transform the world into a very specific place, more diverse than a country, unfolding beyond a map or a file, yet portable in a pocket. Monuments, miniatures, the human scale. Space overflows and synchronously fits into a single verse. A verse is matter resistant to gravity and time, capable of becoming more than earth and more than cloud, managing to metamorphose and mimic what we are made of.

Luis Gárciga. Curator

Boceto para Bajotierras/Sobrenubes (DEL OSO, UN PELO). Cortesía Universidad Nebrija.

Thanks to initiatives such as these, students not only hone their technical and conceptual skills, but also develop fundamental competences for their professional future in the world of art, design and the creative industries. Through teamwork, the exploration of artistic references, the promotion of creativity and critical thinking, they are prepared to face the challenges of their discipline with a broad and multidisciplinary vision.

From Nebrija University, we would like to express our most sincere thanks to Amaya Hernández, director of the Degree in Digital Design and Multimedia, and Lorena Palomino, director of the Degree in Fine Arts, for their invaluable support and commitment to this project.

Prof. Dr. Pablo Álvarez de Toledo Müller Director of the Art Department Faculty of Communication and Arts. University of Nebrija

ABIERTO INFINITO. LO QUE EL CUERPO RECUERDA. CICLO DE PERFORMANCE X ART MADRID'26

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.

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.

PERFORMANCE: OSCURECER UN PAPEL. BY ROCÍO VALDIVIESO

March 5 | 7:00 PM. Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles.

Nocturnality. Installation. Rocío Valdivieso..

Oscurecer un papel forms part of a series of actions in which the artist engages in reading through repetition, memorization, and a measured degree of improvisation. Within this framework, a non-linear mode of reading emerges from a written text that is transformed when spoken aloud, assuming a different form in the act of articulation. The texts stem from an ongoing investigation into materiality, space, the relationships between body and matter, writing, the sculptural, and a sustained interest in the exploration of voice and orality.

The material from which Oscurecer un papel is constructed consists of a collection of purchase receipts the artist has been accumulating over time. The printed text they contain, together with the action of bringing them into proximity with a heat source—thereby activating the thermal paper on which they are produced—generates meanings that revolve around the notions of consumption and wear.

Rocío Valdivieso. Latent Aura. Performance documentation.

ABOUT ROCÍO VALDIVIESO

Rocío Valdivieso is an artist, researcher, and cultural manager. She is currently a PhD candidate in Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid. She holds an MA in Research in Artistic Practices from the University of Castilla–La Mancha (UCLM) and a BA in Fine Arts from the National University of Tucumán, Argentina. She was a Fundación Carolina fellow from 2022 to 2023. She currently co-directs Errática. Laboratory of Processes and Critique in Madrid, alongside Romina Casile.

She was part of the PEEPA 2023 Program at the Centro de Residencias Artísticas, Matadero Madrid. She completed the 2021/22 Artists Program at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, and in 2020 participated in the Intensive Curatorial Program of Proyecto PAC at Galería Gachi Prieto, Buenos Aires. She received the Visual Arts Promotion Award at the 4th Visual Arts Week of the Ente Cultural de Tucumán. She was awarded an AUGM scholarship for an exchange residency at UNESP, São Paulo, Brazil. She also participated in the International Residency Program La Ira de Dios and in the Acéfala Galería Residency for Argentine artists.