INHABITING THE EPHEMERAL: A REFLECTION ON THE “SPECIES” OF SPACES

The Parallel Program of the 21st edition of Art Madrid shapes a conceptual ecosystem where theory, artistic practice, and shared experience converge, transforming the exhibition space into a territory for critical reflection and symbolic production. This initiative establishes the fair as an ephemeral organism capable of hosting multiple layers of meaning, where every architectural element, every artwork, and every movement of the public takes part in the collective construction of sense.

The theoretical foundation of this edition rests on two complementary conceptual pillars: the attention to the infra-ordinary proposed by Georges Perec in Species of Spaces and Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation . On the one hand, the reflection follows Perec’s invitation to pause and focus on what usually goes unnoticed: the everyday details that shape the deep texture of our experience. Applied to the context of an art fair, this fragmented gaze reveals every wall, corridor, and booth as a micro-space of meaning, a narrative unit within a constantly evolving choral story. The fair thus emerges as a temporary archive that only reaches its full potential through the interaction of those who inhabit it, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary through the very act of attention.

Francisco Pereira Coutinho. Prism. 2024. Photograph. Galeria Sâo Mamede.

Glissant, for his part, contributes an ethics of diversity and interdependence that is especially relevant in the contemporary context. His Poetics of Relation proposes that each element maintains its irreducible singularity without demanding complete understanding or reduction to known categories, while at the same time being transformed through its relations with others. This relational conception underpins the curatorial structure of the program, fostering encounters, frictions, and dialogues that expand our understanding of contemporary art as a shared, non-linear experience. The fair ceases to be a homogeneous whole and becomes instead a space of coexistence, where the opacity of the other is respected and valued as a condition for the possibility of genuine encounter.

The articulating concept of “imaginary distances” synthesizes both theoretical frameworks, referring not only to physical distance but also to intervals of attention, subjective paths, and affective micro-cartographies that visitors trace as they move through the space. These invisible distances, absent from architectural plans, form an emotional and sensory cartography that the fair constantly records and reconfigures. Each visitor generates their own map, their own narrative, their particular way of temporarily inhabiting this species of space.

From this perspective, the fair is understood as a surface of multiple inscriptions, where each edition leaves traces, erasures, and new marks. Every fragment, every gesture, every passage creates a layer of memory that turns experience into an act of relation and knowledge. To inhabit the fair, then, is to learn to look at what seems evident, to recognize in the minimal the possibility of the extraordinary, and to accept that every cultural experience is simultaneously archive and relation. The viewer thus adopts an active stance, transforming contemplation into an act of questioning and cohabitation, where artwork and public coexist within the same poetics of attention.

The Art Madrid’26 Parallel Program unfolds through a series of initiatives that will take place both prior to the fair and during the event itself, from March 4 to 8 at its venue in the Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles:

Yoon Weedong. The Sacred 62. Acrylic on canvas. 2025. Banditrazos Gallery.

The curated interview program returns for its fifth consecutive edition, reaffirming itself as one of the defining features of Art Madrid’s Parallel Program. This year, independent curator and art critic Adonay Bermúdez (Lanzarote, Spain, 1985) takes on the direction of the program, bringing his extensive international experience and his sensitivity toward contemporary artistic practices from Ibero-America.

Conversations with Adonay Bermúdez opens a space to delve deeper into the experiences and creative processes of the artists, highlighting the diversity of perspectives that shape the contemporary landscape. Through dialogue, the motivations, concerns, and dynamics that inform each creator’s work are explored, emphasizing the importance of meeting points such as galleries and art fairs in the dissemination and understanding of current art. This initiative reinforces Art Madrid’s commitment to contemporary creation, offering the public a direct and human way to engage with some of the voices that shape the exhibition proposal of this edition.

The participating artists represent a wide spectrum of practices, languages, and sensibilities within contemporary art. They include: Carmen Baena, represented by Galería BAT alberto cornejo; Sergio Rocafort, represented by Shiras Galería; Chamo San, represented by Inéditad Gallery; Cedric Le Corf, represented by Loo & Lou Gallery; Daniel Bum, represented by CLC ARTE; Iyán Castaño, represented by Galería Arancha Osoro; Julian Manzelli (Chu), represented by g•gallery; and the duo DIMASLA (Diana + Álvaro), represented by Galería La Mercería. Each proposal offers a singular perspective on materials, formats, and concepts, creating a polyphony of voices that enriches the audience’s experience and invites them to explore new ways of approaching the creative universes of those who shape the fair.

Alex Voinea. AVP 1377, Acrylic on paper. 2025. Galería Rodrigo Juarranz.

Open Booth: A space for emerging creation

The third edition of the Open Booth reaffirms Art Madrid’s commitment to emerging creation, allocating a physical space of twenty-two square meters to be intervened by an artist at the beginning of their professional career. On this occasion, the invited artist is Daniel Barrio (Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1988), who will develop a site-specific project titled “Despiece”.

The Open Booth project functions as a platform for visibility and experimentation, allowing emerging artists to engage on equal terms with participating galleries. This space is conceived as an exhibition platform where ideas can materialize without the usual market constraints, encouraging risk-taking proposals and works-in-progress. In this way, the initiative exemplifies Art Madrid’s commitment to supporting new voices, recognizing that the contemporary art ecosystem requires transitional spaces where artists can professionalize and gain visibility among collectors, institutions, and other agents in the field. The Open Booth thus fits within the relational logic that underpins the entire fair program, understood as a territory of possible encounters where the emerging and the established coexist and mutually enrich one another.

Daniel Barrio’s proposal is a site-specific project that puts history, urban memory, and the materiality of space into tension. The work unfolds as a reconstructed archive, where each element—from the iconic Belvedere torso to the wax table and pigmented canvases—articulates a dialogue between the classical and the contemporary, the sacred and the everyday. In this work, the artist explores the fragility of materials, the viewer’s perception, and the sensory experience: through handmade pigments, mortar, lime, and wax—elements that activate the viewer’s corporeality, placing them in a state of vulnerability and heightened attention. The canvases, intervened upon printed supports featuring fragments of the city, function as a poetic record of culture and consumption transformed into ruin, evoking a space that is simultaneously interior and exterior.

Marcos Juncal. After Party II. 2025. Instalation. Galería La Mercería.

Nebrija Space: NotanIA SipedagogIE

Universidad Nebrija and Art Madrid join forces for the second time to present a curatorial project resulting from the work of students in the Fine Arts degree program. Nebrija Space has been conceived to support visual artists in training during their first incursion into Madrid’s contemporary art circuit. Sponsored by Liquitex, a global reference brand in professional acrylics, this initiative represents a unique opportunity for emerging artists to integrate into and actively participate in an event of national and international relevance.

The curatorial proposal is articulated under the title "NotanIA SipedagogIE", a neologism that condenses a critical reflection on the relationship between art pedagogy, the market, and technology. In contrast to the algorithmic logic of Artificial Intelligence, this project proposes the notion of Aesthetic Intelligence: a form of knowledge that integrates the sensory, the affective, the intuitive, and the cultural. It thus advances a critical and empathetic pedagogy that opposes the automation of creative thinking and promotes a situated yet nomadic aesthetic experience.

The methodology is based on the poetic appropriation of verses as a starting point for the creation of untitled works, accompanied by a mood board that documents the sensitive process. The booth is conceived as a choral and transitory work, inspired by Madrid’s SER zones, where art becomes a space of symbolic transit, resistance, and reflection on being, desire, the presence of the other, and the temporary occupation of artistic space. This proposal directly connects with the fair’s theoretical foundations, understanding the exhibition space as a site of constant negotiation between the individual and the collective.

Fabian Treiber. Strayed.Acrylic, ink, oil pastel, pastel, and paper on canvas. 2025. KANT Gallery.

The Performance Cycle presents its fourth edition under the title "Open Infinite: What the Body Remembers", an initiative aimed at strengthening the presence of women artists within the Parallel Program. This open call is directed at creators whose performative work explores the tensions between body, memory, space, and time, transforming the fair into a welcoming space for ephemeral, fragmentary, and relational experiences that expand the viewer’s perceptual and symbolic boundaries.

The project is grounded in Erving Goffman’s theory of everyday life as a stage of modulated performances, proposing that the artists’ bodies function as performative “fronts” that shape the framework of interpretation for the public. The performances dramatize the everyday, exposing tensions between the visible and the hidden, the idealized and the effort required, while articulating strategies of presence that reveal or conceal power, vulnerability, and intimacy.

Building on these notions, the cycle broadens its scope toward posthuman, decolonial, queer, ritual, and ecological perspectives, conceiving performance as an act capable of making visible the invisible connections and tensions that traverse bodies, objects, and contexts. The invited artists are Jimena Tercero (Madrid, 1998), Amanda Gatti (Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1996), La Burra Negra Collective (made up of: Sara Gema, Sasha Falcke, Ascen Soto, Gaby Feldman, Regina Carolina, and Sofía Barco), and Rocío Valdivieso (Tucumán, Argentina, 1994)., whose proposals will transform the fair into a space of welcome for ephemeral and relational experiences that expand the viewer’s perceptual and symbolic limits.

"Open Infinite…" frames the body as a site of constant negotiation between the individual and the collective, where ephemerality acquires symbolic density and the fragility of identity and the power of encounter with others are simultaneously manifested. The series proposes an inquiry into the connections between body, memory, space, and time, understanding performance as a practice that activates critical and sensitive readings of the symbolic layers that constitute us. In this sense, the body is revealed as a living archive, a territory where the marks of personal and collective history are inscribed, and where belongings and resistances are negotiated.

Eli Craven. Soap Opera 1. 2023.Inkjet print and hand-painted frame. KANT Gallery.

Lecturas: Curated Walkthroughs

The project Lecturas: Curated Walkthroughs is a cultural mediation activity designed to bring visiting audiences closer to the works exhibited in the General Galleries Program. Art historians and cultural communicators Marisol Salanova and Zuriñe Lafón invite us to discover new perspectives on contemporary art through itineraries designed to guide us through the exhibition proposals of the edition.

These thematic walkthroughsfunction as opening devices, as tools that facilitate understanding without imposing closed readings. The curators will trace four itineraries that reveal unexpected dialogues between works from different galleries, offering interpretive keys that enrich the gaze without exhausting it.

This initiative is part of the conception of the fair as a space for collective learning, fostering access to contemporary art and creating the conditions for a broad and diverse audience to fully enjoy the experience. At the same time, the walkthroughs materialize the “imaginary distances” that conceptually articulate the edition, demonstrating that each curatorial discourse constructs a particular narrative, a specific way of inhabiting the exhibition space.

Dave Cooper. Arriving at Frederic's. Oil on canvas. 2024. Est_ArtSpace.

La Quedada. Studio visit to Daniel Barrio. Guest artist at the Art Madrid’26 Open Booth

As a prelude to the fair days, Art Madrid’26 organizes several activities designed to bring the public closer to the creative process and to the participating artists. One of these is a studio visit to Daniel Barrio, invited artist for the Open Booth project. This activity will offer first-hand insight into the context, methodology, and research behind his work, providing an intimate and direct experience that enriches the relationship between the public and contemporary creation. Attendees will have the opportunity to enjoy this visit as a preview, prior to the artist’s participation in the fair.

“Despiece” is Daniel Barrio’s proposal for the Open Booth at Art Madrid’26. The work functions as a reconstructed archive, where each element—from the iconic Belvedere Torso to the wax table and pigmented canvases—articulates a dialogue between tradition and contemporaneity, history and the present.

Daniel Barrio (Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1988) has lived and worked in Madrid since 2014. Trained in painting at the Academy of Visual Arts in Cienfuegos and in Art Direction at the Madrid School of Cinematography, he develops a practice in which image and space are conceived as constructs of meaning. His work employs proprietary techniques reminiscent of fresco, using handmade pigments and supports, linking each piece to the time and environment in which it is created. He explores urban memory, migration, and the construction of identity through what has been abandoned, re-signifying press and media images as a way of resisting commodification and contemporary surveillance. His practice is a slow, reflective gesture—an act of preservation and dialogue with the ephemeral and the intimate.

Jordi Larroch. Pide un deseo. 2025. Photograph. CLC ARTE.

The Parallel Program of Art Madrid’26 is an extensive initiative within a fair model that understands contemporary art as a shared experience where multiple agents, perspectives, and temporalities converge. From curated interviews to the performance series, from the Open Booth to the Nebrija Space, each initiative contributes to creating an experience in which the audience becomes an active participant in a temporary community. The fair thus reveals itself as a living organism, another kind of space in constant reconfiguration.

Art Madrid, aware of its cultural responsibility beyond its commercial dimension, seeks to generate spaces for reflection, learning, and encounter without renouncing the art market. The challenge lies in maintaining a delicate balance between the ephemeral nature of the fair and the density of the aesthetic experience, consolidating a context in which art is perceived as an object of appreciation, debate, and knowledge.

NEBRIJA UNIVERSITY ASSERTS AESTHETIC INTELLIGENCE IN THE FACE OF THE ALGORITHMIC ERA AT ART MADRID’26

The Nebrija Space hosts a curatorial project that proposes a critical alternative to the automation of creative thought.

Nebrija University is participating in the 21st edition of Art Madrid with a curatorial project that offers a critical reflection on the relationship between art education, the market, and technology. Under the concept of Aesthetic Intelligence, the proposal positions itself as an alternative to the algorithmic logic of Artificial Intelligence, prioritizing sensitivity, gesture, materiality, and experience as forms of knowledge that cannot be automated.

At a historic moment in which Artificial Intelligence is bursting onto the scene in all areas of cultural production, generating both fascination and concern, Nebrija University is committed to defending those dimensions of the artistic experience that remain irreducible to algorithmic logic. This is not a question of denying the impact of technology or adopting a technophobic stance, but rather of identifying and defending those areas of knowledge that require the presence of the body, sensitivity, gesture, and lived experience.

Álvaro Fernández. Remember/Forget. Mixed media on canvas. 40 x 60 cm. 2026.

The central concept of the proposal is that of Aesthetic Intelligence, understood as a form of knowledge that integrates the sensory, the affective, the intuitive, and the cultural. In contrast to the logic of Artificial Intelligence, based on algorithms, recognition patterns, and the capacity for mass replication, Aesthetic Intelligence prioritizes dimensions that remain anchored in the unique human experience: the unique and unrepeatable gesture, the physical presence of the body in the creative act, the material texture of the supports and pigments, and the temporality of the creative process.

This claim takes on special importance in a context in which generative AI is capable of producing images in a matter of seconds, processing millions of previous visual references to synthesize new compositions. However, what the machine cannot replicate is precisely what constitutes the core of the aesthetic experience. The affective resonance of a specific color applied with a certain pressure on a specific surface, the intuitive decision that arises from the dialogue between the artist and the material, or the productive error that opens up unexpected paths.

Aesthetic Intelligence is thus understood as a form of epistemic resistance, a defense of those ways of knowing the world that cannot be automated because they are constitutively linked to the embodied, situated, and temporal experience of creative subjects.

Pablo Padilla Sadurni. ST. Repaired passe-partout and acrylic. 18 x 18 x 48 cm. 2026.

Under the provocative neologism NotanIA SipedagogIE, which encapsulates the conceptual proposal in its very formulation: “Not so much AI, more pedagogy.” This linguistic construction, which plays with the presence and absence of fragments of the words “Artificial Intelligence” and “pedagogy,” signals a clear stance on the role of artistic training in today's technological context.

It proposes a critical pedagogy that does not reject technology but refuses to subordinate artistic learning processes to the logic of efficiency, optimization, and reproduction that characterize algorithmic systems. Faced with the temptation to use AI as a shortcut or substitute for the creative process, this pedagogy vindicates the formative value of trial and error, material experimentation, and time devoted to exploration without a predetermined goal.

A pedagogy that is also defined as empathetic, in the sense that it recognizes and values the affective and relational dimension of artistic learning, which does not understand creation as an isolated individual act but as a process that involves emotional resonances, symbolic exchanges, and collective construction of meaning. The stand itself, conceived as a choral work, embodies this understanding of creation as a shared experience.

Verónica Bergua Tabuyo. Cartography of Uncle Pablo. Digital video. Edition: 1/5. 2:40 min. 2026.

The methodology proposed for the project is as rigorous as it is open to experimentation. Each participating student begins their creative process by poetically appropriating a verse, a stanza that will serve as the conceptual and emotional seed of the work. The choice of poetry, as a form of language that condenses multiple and ambiguous meanings, that works with sonic and visual resonances, that suggests rather than describes, constitutes an ideal starting point for a project that champions the ineffable, that which cannot be fully translated into code.

Starting with the selection of a verse, each artist has developed a mood board conceived as a board of atmospheres and, at the same time, as a sensitive cartography of the process. This resource allows the imagery of the verse to be expanded through objects, images, textures, materials, and other elements that resonate with the initial poetic experience. It is a tool that makes the process of intersemiotic translation visible: the transition from verbal to visual language, from textual to material, highlighting the transformations and shifts that occur along the way.

The next step involves developing a two-dimensional work that deliberately avoids written language. This restriction seeks to prioritize visual and material exploration over textual narrative, relying on the communicative power of form, color, texture, and composition. The work must speak for itself, without the need for verbal explanations to mediate between the piece and the viewer.

The creative process is conceived from an experimental logic similar to that of a laboratory, where trial, error, correction, and rehearsal are an integral part of the method. No predetermined result is sought; rather, the work is allowed to emerge from the dialogue between the initial intention and the possibilities (and resistances) of the materials.

Blanca Lanaspa. Witness 176.8. Mixed media ceramics. 40.8 x 176.8 cm. 2026.

The booth that houses the Nebrija Space is conceived as a work of art in itself, with a choral and transitory character. Inspired by Madrid's SER Zones, those areas of regulated temporary parking, the exhibition space is designed as a territory of symbolic transit, a place of ephemeral occupation that invites reflection on presence, desire, and temporality.

This metaphor of SER Zones is particularly powerful, because just as these urban spaces allow for the temporary occupation of public space under certain conditions, the stand is presented as a territory that artists temporarily occupy during the fair, establishing a dialogue between permanence (the works as physical objects that will remain after the event) and transience (the specific spatial configuration that exists only during the days of the fair).

The choral nature of the project underscores the collective dimension of artistic creation. It is not a sum of individualities but a polyphony of voices that intertwine, resonate, and dialogue with each other. Each individual work maintains its autonomy but takes on new meanings in relation to the others, generating a fabric of visual, conceptual, and affective correspondences.

Marialex Arcaya. The wine cellar. Acrylic on wood. 80 x 160 cm. 2026.

The project brings together the work of seven students from the Fine Arts Degree program at Nebrija University: Marialex Arcaya develops “La bodega” (The Cellar), a reflection on everyday objects as containers of memory and identity. Based on the verse: "And at the bottom of my favorite beach bag there is sand, rusty coins, and a receipt for ice cream that no longer exists. Summer can be preserved in layers", the artist explores Venezuelan bodegas as spaces of nostalgia and belonging. Through a series of acrylic paintings on canvas depicting products and packaging, she investigates how the most mundane objects can function as repositories of memories and markers of cultural identity. Her work raises questions about what we erase and what we preserve, about how the passage of time transforms both objects and ourselves, celebrating the capacity for rebirth and transformation that characterizes the human experience.

Laura Nogales. Another Spring. Acrylic and embroidery on canvas. 94.5 x 38.6 inches. 2026.

Laura Nogales participates with “Another Spring,” a textile installation that explores the decomposition and deconstruction of the concept of femininity in a transitory environment: the shower. Her work, constructed from scraps, recycled clothing remnants, stockings, and various types of fillings, forms an abstract mass that represents decomposed femininity in constant mutation. The drain functions as a symbolic element that swallows everything, witnessing intimate transformations. Nogales addresses how femininity as a shared experience suffers great ups and downs in the current context, where machismo is making a strong comeback in the media and social networks. Her textile proposal generates emotional ambiguity in the viewer, who may feel attracted or repelled by the figure, reflecting the contradictions inherent in the experience of constructing and defending female identity in an adverse context. Her work takes as its reference the fragment of the poem: “Above the shower, the steam draws maps that fade away".

Inés López. Sedentary. Digital photography. 30 x 40 cm. 2026.

Inés López presents Sedentario, a work inspired by the verse: “There, dust particles are an archive in suspension.” The project reflects on the capacity of domestic spaces to preserve what the body forgets when they cease to be inhabited. The photographic series is set inside a house under construction, in rooms suspended between use and abandonment, where absence manifests itself as a silent accumulation of matter, traces, and time. Architectural plans and projections in an unfinished building expand the proposal, establishing a dialogue between the projected space and the lived space, between what was once inhabited and what has not yet begun to be inhabited. The work thus proposes a meditation on the transience of the body in the face of the silent persistence of architecture.

Verónica Bergua Tabuyo. Cartography of Uncle Pablo. Digital video. Edition: 1/5. 2:40 min. 2026.

Verónica Bergua presents “Cartografía del tío Pablo” (Uncle Pablo's Cartography), a deeply personal project that explores the relationship between compulsive hoarding, mental health, and emotional territory. Through a video installation that combines minimalist photography of objects taken from the room of her uncle, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, Diogenes syndrome, and kleptomania, Bergua constructs a visual map of mental chaos materialized in physical space. The sequence of images, presented at varying speeds, generates an experience of anxiety in the viewer that reflects the nature of compulsive hoarding. Her work invites us to reflect on our own relationship with objects, on the boundaries between need and attachment, and on how the territory we inhabit can become a mirror of our mental territory. His proposal is inspired by the verses: “Under the bed... objects accumulate that we don't remember losing.” “A museum without texts or labels: the drawer of cables from broken devices.” “The box of expired medicines holds the history of ailments that no longer hurt.”

Blanca Lanaspa. Witness 176.8. Mixed media ceramics. 40.8 x 176.8 cm. 2026.

Blanca Lanaspa presents “Testigo 176.8,” a work based on the verse: "The coat rack in the entrance holds what we are before we enter and after we leave. A vertical threshold where transitions hang.“ Her proposal takes the form of a ceramic pegboard, a combinatorial board with removable pieces of different surfaces, glazes, and textures. Each element functions as a ”sensitive accident," the result of processes involving both aesthetic planning and material chance. The pieces explore states of matter: sprouts, leaks, overflows, erosions, cracked surfaces, contractions, and expansions. The tactile and interactive nature of the work invites the viewer to engage with it directly through their body. Accompanied by a mood board documenting the ceramic research process, the piece celebrates the unpredictability of materials and the beauty of the unsystematic.

Pablo Padilla Sadurni. ST. Detail. Repaired mat and acrylic. 7.1 x 7.1 x 18.7 inches. 2026.

Pablo Padilla presents “Untitled,” an architectural sculpture inspired by the verse: “The mismatched sock is not lost: it inhabits a place that does not exist.” Conceived as a spatial analogy for the search for fulfillment, the piece proposes an architectural archetype that refers to the world of ideas; an imagined place, necessary and yet unattainable. Constructed from thin cardboard, the work takes the form of impossible, labyrinthine structures inhabited by scale figures that wander through corridors, staircases, and dead-end rooms. These spaces, simultaneously tense and contemplative, combine the romanticism of introspection with the inhospitable coldness of brutalism. The work creates a surreal atmosphere that oscillates between peaceful and tense, inviting a sensory and emotional experience of shared loneliness, isolation, and the search for mental refuges that do not exist in the physical world.

Álvaro Fernández. Remember/Forget. Detail. Mixed media on canvas. 40 x 60 cm. 2026.

Álvaro Fernández presents “Remember/Forget,” a work inspired by the verse: "In the elevator mirror, two people are reflected without touching each other. What separates them is not air: it is the possibility of saying nothing." Through hybrid works that combine manual transfers on fabric with digitally altered photographs, Fernández explores silence, shared presence, and the coexistence of intimate worlds that do not touch. His transfers, made using gel plates or lavender oil, generate unstable and deteriorated images, like memories in the process of fading. The fragmentation and displacement of photographic elements multiply the scenes, creating layers of overlapping temporality. His work materializes the fragility of memories and the power of silence as a space for nonverbal intimacy.

Blanca Lanaspa. Witness 176.8. Mixed media ceramics. 40.8 x 176.8 cm. 2026.

At a time when the debate on Artificial Intelligence and artistic creation is intensifying, with positions ranging from uncritical enthusiasm to outright rejection, Nebrija University's proposal for Art Madrid'26 offers a third way, a critical stance that does not deny technological reality but clearly defends those dimensions of the artistic experience that remain irreducible to automation.

The concept of Aesthetic Intelligence proposes an epistemological alternative that recognizes the validity of forms of knowledge based on sensitivity, intuition, bodily experience, and affective resonance. These are not “minor” or subsidiary forms of knowledge with respect to rational or algorithmic knowledge, but equally valid modalities that are absolutely fundamental in the field of artistic creation.

This curatorial project thus represents a valuable contribution to the contemporary debate on technology and culture, proposing that university art education should not be limited to preparing students to adapt to the market or the tools available, but should equip them with critical skills, material sensitivity, and awareness of the specificity of their practice.

Art Madrid'26 will thus host a proposal that, beyond its individual aesthetic quality, constitutes a collective reflection on the present and future of artistic creation, on the role of educational institutions in training new generations of artists, and on the need to defend spaces for experimentation, slowness, and materiality in an accelerated and increasingly virtualized world. Through this project, Nebrija University reaffirms the irreplaceable value of Aesthetic Intelligence as a form of knowledge and as a practice of resistance against algorithmic homogenization, committing to a pedagogy that places sensory experience, bodily gesture, and affective resonance at the center as fundamental dimensions of the human condition.