Getting together, making a plan to get to know each other and discovering an artist's workspace together can be an appealing proposal to start approaching the world of art. It is always a stimulus for the senses to enter a fertile ground for the imagination and to breathe the creative environment that usually surrounds these intimate spaces. To prove this, we have organized #LaQuedada, an itinerary through the studios of some of the artists who will participate in Art Madrid'24.

Have you ever wondered what an artist's workspace looks like? Have you ever imagined where an artist produces his or her work, for example when preparing to participate in an art fair?

It's very possible that you have unanswered questions. So, to help you discover this wonderful world of possibilities, we have organized #LaQuedada, an Art Madrid initiative to bring you closer to the surprising and sometimes romanticized world in which visual artists create.

A visit to an artist's studio is the perfect opportunity to get to know their aesthetic visions first hand and to be part of the experience of listening to them talk.We take the time to understand what their working methodologies are, what future projects they are working on, what the processes of their works are like, what materials they use to achieve those effects that we never imagined could be possible to produce... And so, among so much curiosity, we take a journey that reveals order and chaos, sketches and pigments, mutant ideas and possible utopias, notes and strokes that give shape to the vitality that each new project represents.

Artists are inspired by the experiences of their lives and their most intimate surroundings, and in their works they express the conflicts that torment them and the concerns they perceive in the society of which they are a part. Each of them represents an intimate, authentic, personal and yet shared truth. A common connection that unites us with them through the sensitivity with which we can identify if we look at them with other eyes: the eyes of the soul.

Today, being an artist in the art world is an act of courage. More and more artists are threatened by the precarious situation in our country today. That is why it is so important to support, promote and accompany artists. It doesn't matter if they are emerging artists or have been working in the art sector for part of their lives, what you should keep in mind is that you can contribute to the development of their career by acquiring some of their work; visiting their profiles on social networks and sharing their projects; attending galleries, fairs, cultural institutions or museums where they are exhibiting; or simply, connecting with the vitality of their artistic expressions in a visit to their studios.

We want #LaQuedada will be a recurring space that encourages open dialogue between the public and creators. A responsible way to promote the growth of the city's cultural structure is to make art accessible to all types of audiences. At Art Madrid we know this, and that is why today, more than ever, we want to bring contemporary art closer to everyone, trying to break the illusion that defines it as elitist and distances it from its humanist vocation. Creativity is everywhere and life is in the artist's studio.

In the first edition of #LaQuedada, we will have the opportunity to visit the studios of five artists participating in Art Madrid'24:

Carlos Tárdez - Galería Bea Villamarín

Elena Gual - Arma Gallery

Lara Padilla - Punts Galería

Richard García - Galería BAT Alberto Cornejo

Marina Tellme - Open Booth Art Madrid’24

La Quedada is a project designed for all audiences. Is possible thanks to ONE SHOT HOTELS, one of Art Madrid'24's official sponsors.
You can be part of it if you are a professional in the field of culture or if you are a passionate art lover. The duration of the visits will be approximately one and a half hours. If you are interested, you can find the calendar of activities on our website. You can also register by clicking on the button below.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

CARLOS TÁRDEZ (Madrid, 1976)

Multidisciplinary artist, in whose work has special importance the prominence of the message that is hidden in all his creations.In both painting and sculpture, he has achieved a level of quality that has earned him, among many other awards, the Medal of Honor of the BMW Painting Prize in 2010, 2018 and 2021.

Carlos Tárdez in his studio. Image courtesy of the artist.

ELENA GUAL (Mallorca, 1994)

Elena Gual is known for her figurative paintings of women that celebrate their beauty and promote gender equality. Gual creates highly textured representations of skin, hair, and clothing by applying thick, impasto brushstrokes to her canvases with a palette knife. Gual is a graduate of the Florence Academy of Art. She strives to transform classical approaches to anatomy, composition, and light into her own style. Also a self-taught photographer, Gual often creates paintings from her own photographs, exploring the relationship between the two disciplines.

Elena Gual in her studio. image courtesy of the artist.

LARA PADILLA (Madrid, 1988)

Lara Padilla has a degree in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid and a Master's degree in Film Photography Direction from the TAI School. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions at national and international level, such as her recent solo exhibition at the Juan Silió Gallery or her participation in the last editions of the Santander 2023 and Art Basel Miami 2022 art fairs. In addition to her artistic career, she has made a name for herself as a fashion designer, collaborating with clients such as Springfield, Pepe Jeans and Levis. She also actively collaborates with Patricia Field, the stylist behind series such as Sex In The City and The Devil Wears Prada, for her Patricia Field Art Fashion project, creating unique hand-painted garments. Lara Padilla lives and works in Madrid, Miami and New York.

ara Padilla in her studio. image courtesy of the artist.

RICHARD GARCÍA (Madrid, 1995)

Richard García graduated in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid in the year 2017. After this stage, he began his journey as an artist, winning numerous competitions and beginning to develop his own style and discourse. The creative process is one of the most important parts of his work, in which he allows himself to be guided by intuition, through which he reflects superimposition and transparency.

Richard García in his studio. Image courtesy of the artist.

MARINA TELLME (Almería, 1995)

She has a degree in Fine Arts from the Alonso Cano Faculty (Granada) and a Masters in Film Directing from the TAI. She has also qualified as a voice actress at the EDM (Madrid). Her work has been exhibited at the Humboldt University (Berlin), the García Lorca Art Centre (Granada), the Bless Hotel (Madrid), the Instituto de la Mujer de Almería, selected at the Art Sur Festival of Art in Action (Córdoba) and the Femujer de Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), among others. Her art is the result of her passion for telling stories. Her paintings, sculptures and installations present a scenography (like a frame of an animated film) with characters and circumstances that are mostly comic and naïve in style, but with room for social criticism.

Marina Tellme in her studio. Image courtesy of the artist.

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.

In this sense, the invited artists will construct micro-scenarios in which gestures, postures, and bodily movements function as performative “fronts,” shaping the framework of perception and meaning for the audience. These actions dramatize everyday experience, offering idealized or heightened interpretations of the relationship between body, space, and temporality, while certain elements — invisible effort, internal tensions, contradictions — remain partially concealed, generating deeper layers of meaning and resonance.

In line with Goffman, performance operates within the tension between idealized representation and real effort, between what is visible and what remains silent. The artists manage the information they convey, selecting what is shown and what is concealed, articulating strategies of presence that may reveal or disguise power, vulnerability, resistance, or intimacy. In this context, idealization implies the construction of a performative language capable of foregrounding values, tensions, and relational possibilities, exposing the poetic density of the everyday and, if one wishes, breaking the barrier of opacity that shapes our behavior in “real” daily life.

Although the series focuses on the notions of body ↔ memory ↔ representation ↔ presence, it seeks to expand its horizon, conceiving performance as an act that reveals invisible bonds and tensions traversing bodies, objects, and contexts. Within this network of walls, stands, and corridors, parallels emerge as the Galería de Cristal becomes a mirror of aesthetic experiences: a space beyond the strictly artistic sphere temporarily inhabited by the ephemeral presence of contemporary art, as occurs within the context of the fair.

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.

INVITED ARTISTS

COLECTIVO LA BURRA NEGRA (Málaga, 2024)

La Burra Negra is a nomadic Action Art collective based in Málaga, founded in 2024 following its first residency in Totalán. It is self-managed by Ascensión Soto Fernández, Gabriela Feldman de la Rocha, Sasha Camila Falcke, Sara Gema Domínguez Castillo, Sofía Barco Sánchez, and Regina Lagos González, six creators from diverse backgrounds who met at the Hospital de Artistas of La Juan Gallery.

The collective brings together professionals from jewelry, painting, performing arts, music, dance, cultural mediation, and cultural management. Its activities include an annual residency in Totalán, the production of performative works, cultural mediation, and site-specific interventions. Since its creation, it has participated in the Periscopio Conference at La Térmica, presented A granel at the MVA in Málaga, carried out various actions in Totalán — most recently during its second annual residency — and taken part with its own proposals in Roger Bernat’s performance Desplazamiento del Congreso de los Diputados in Madrid.

Colectivo La Burra Negra presents at Art Madrid’26 its performance: ALTA FACTURA

The project forms part of a performative investigation that questions exhibition frameworks and the hierarchies of value that shape artistic creation. Through textile language and the body as a surface of inscription, the collective examines the tension between process and result, craft and spectacle, focusing on what the cultural system tends to conceal: invested time, wear, fragility, and the manual labor that sustains every work. Within this framework, the fashion runway appears as a symbolic structure condensing brilliance, consumption, and final product, becoming the point of departure for its subversion.

In this context, Alta Factura shifts attention to the seams — both literal and metaphorical — that usually remain in the shadows backstage. Through conceptual textile pieces, the performance exposes the rigor of craft and the artist’s vulnerability, transforming the runway into a critical space where process becomes the protagonist. By making visible the joints, adjustments, and traces of making, the work reclaims the value of the invisible and confronts the viewer with the material and affective conditions that sustain contemporary artistic practice.

ROCÍO VALDIVIESO (Tucumán, Argentina, 1994)

Rocío Valdivieso is an artist, researcher, and cultural manager. She is currently a PhD candidate in Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid and holds a Master’s degree in Research in Artistic Practices from the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM). She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the National University of Tucumán and was a Fundación Carolina fellow between 2022 and 2023.

She currently coordinates Errática Laboratorio de procesos and Clínica de obra, alongside Romina Casile, in Madrid. She was part of the PEEPA 2023 Program at Matadero Madrid’s Center for Artistic Residencies, mentored by Dora García, Cabello/Carceller, and Isabel Marcos. She completed the 2021/22 Artists Program at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires.

Among her solo exhibitions are El orden de las virtudes (2022), Pintura plegaria (2021), and Teoría de lo involuntario (2019) in Tucumán, Argentina. She has participated in group exhibitions including Aura latente at Espacio Amazonas, the closing event of the PEEPA Program at Matadero Madrid, and Ceder una huella in Cuenca, Spain. Since 2013, she has participated in various educational programs and frequently writes texts accompanying art exhibitions. She is a founding member and former secretary of the board of the Association of Visual Arts Workers of Tucumán (TAViT).

Rocío Valdivieso presents at Art Madrid’26 her performance: OSCURECER UN PAPEL

Oscurecer un papel is part of a series of actions in which reading is constructed through repetition, memorization, and a degree of improvisation. A non-linear reading emerges from a written text that transforms when spoken aloud, shifting its form and meaning in the very act of utterance. The texts stem from research into materiality, space, and the relationships between body and matter, as well as writing, sculpture, and the exploration of voice and orality.

The material used to construct the piece consists of purchase receipts accumulated over time. The printed text on them, together with the act of bringing them close to a heat source — triggering the reaction of thermal paper — generates meanings linked to consumption, record-keeping, and wear.

AMANDA GATTI (Porto Alegre, Brasil, 1996)

Amanda Gatti is an artist and researcher whose practice unfolds across performance, video, photography, and installation. She explores the intersections between body, object, and space, investigating how we occupy — and are occupied by — the spaces that surround us. Drawing from experiences of displacement and observations of domestic and urban environments, her work conceives the body as mediator and archive, transforming found objects, spatial arrangements, and everyday gestures into ephemeral architectures and relational situations.

She completed a Master’s in Scenic Practice and Visual Culture at Museo Reina Sofía/UCLM (Spain, 2023) and holds a degree in Audiovisual Production from PUCRS (Brazil, 2018). Her work has been presented at institutions and contexts such as Museo Reina Sofía, Fundación Antonio Pérez, Galería Nueva, CRUCE, and Teatro Pradillo, as well as in exhibitions and festivals in Brazil, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She currently resides in Madrid, with secondary bases in Brazil and the United Kingdom.

Amanda Gatti presents at Art Madrid’26 her performance: TRAYECTORIA

This performance continues the artist’s long-term research with objects found in public space: obsolete fragments, remnants of everyday use, and discarded materials that, once painted blue, acquire renewed visibility and an autonomous sculptural condition. These materials form an archive activated through gesture and displacement.

In Trayectoria, the artist proposes to traverse the fair’s main corridor while dragging a large group of these objects, linked together and tied to her shoelaces. The journey transforms this transit area into an active space in which body and materials generate new forms. The objects function as extensions of the moving body: they tense, divert, slow down, and reconfigure each step. The action explores the coexistence between the durable and the ephemeral, between what has been discarded and what insists on remaining. It approaches transit as the simultaneous activation of the material and immaterial, proposing an encounter between gesture, the sculptural, and all that continues to accompany us even after having been left behind.

JIMENA TERCERO (Madrid, 1998)

Jimena Tercero is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice — developed through video, performance, and painting — investigates the limits of identity in relation to the human body. Her work explores concepts such as memory, tangibility, and play, delving into subconscious pain inscribed in bodily memory.

She trained in painting with Lola Albín and in analog photography in Cambridge (2014). Between 2018 and 2020, she specialized in audiovisual practice, training as a filmmaker alongside figures such as director Víctor Erice and the production company El Deseo. She later completed a Master’s in Creative Direction at ELISAVA and developed her performative practice at La Juan Gallery.

She directed works such as Private (2016) and Paranoid (2021), presented at Galería Aspa Contemporary. She continued this line of inquiry in Yo mi me conmigo (2023), presented at Teatros del Canal; Inside Voices (2021), filmed at Conde Duque with the guidance of Itziar Okariz; and La última regla at La Juan Gallery. In 2026, she premieres the documentary Contando Ovejas, a portrait of two shepherds in Majadahonda reflecting on rural memory and its relationship with territory and time.

Jimena Tercero presents at Art Madrid’26 her performance: OFF LINE

OFF LINE is a performative piece that reflects on how the digital era is transforming the body’s relationship with the world and with others. Interaction is increasingly constructed through screens and interfaces, and identity shifts toward the virtual, subordinating physical experience to digital representation. In this context, the body becomes fragile: it loses density, memory, and active presence, becoming a support for information or image.

Hyperconnectivity and fragmented attention generate an increasingly inert corporeality, characterized by reduced spontaneous movement and diminished direct sensory interaction. This raises fundamental questions: how is presence redefined when our relationship with the world depends on technological mediation? What will happen to bodily experience in a future in which virtuality predominates over the physical?

There is a risk of progressive bodily passivity: bodies that remain still, whose activity is determined by devices, and whose memory is externalized into digital records. The fragmentation of physical experience and the primacy of technological representation create a scenario in which the body, although visible, is displaced from its original function as an agent of perception and action. This conceptual framework invites reflection on how digitalization affects corporeality, memory, and social relations, as well as on the vulnerability and inertia that traverse bodies in increasingly technologized environments.

PERFORMANCES:

Wednesday, March 4 | 7:00 PM — Colectivo La Burra Negra. Performance: Alta Factura

Thursday, March 5 | 7:00 PM — Rocío Valdivieso. Performance: Oscurecer un papel

Friday, March 6 | 7:00 PM — Amanda Gatti. Performance: Trayectoria

Saturday, March 7 | 7:00 PM — Jimena Tercero. Performance: OFF LINE

Art Madrid celebrates its twenty-first edition, consolidating itself as a platform for visibility and dialogue for national and international galleries and artists during Madrid Art Week. In this context, the fair renews its commitment to experimentation and to the inclusion of artistic practices that challenge conventional art market formats. The integration of the Performance Cycle — now in its third edition — reflects this institutional commitment to generating a space that fosters the production of live artistic experiences.

The Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles, the fair’s venue, thus becomes an ideal environment in which architecture and the event’s own dynamics enhance the ephemeral and relational character of performance.

With this initiative, Art Madrid reaffirms its role as an active agent in the construction of a plural artistic ecosystem, committed to presence, research, and dialogue as fundamental axes of contemporary art.