MediaLab Prado faces like every December a difficult challenge: to summarise in a day the work of a whole year and share it with the citizens. With this premise, the essential date on the agenda is approaching. The 14th you can not miss “One day in a year. Annual MediaLab Prado Festival ”. With an intense and varied program of activities, the centre opens its doors to families, curious and neighbours with the purpose of turning this pre-Christmas event into an encounter of exchange, knowledge and entertainment designed for everyone: from 0 to 99 years.

For the little ones, MediaLab Prado has created a special program to stimulate all the senses. Starting with music storytellers, followed by Japanese percussion classes, going through performances that recover the poems of García Lorca, Alberti or Gloria Strong. And that's not all, because there will also be room for fantasy and imagination in activities that involve body and mind. Some of these workshops are run by Blanca Helga, a children's illustrator specialising in play-books for children that she edits in the publishing house "Hopitihop" founded by herself. With Blanca, kids can create fantastic characters from cut-outs and collages, as well as start their first artist book with digital tools. And paying attention to body expression, there will also be an experimentation workshop on the body and the way we understand it, by the hand of Giz&Gif.

The connection between art and technology will be available to visitors with an immersive virtual reality experience throughout most of the day. This proposal is in charge of the Synthetic Realities Laboratory (LabRS), one of the centre’s workgroups that investigates the development of these virtual environments. On the other hand, there will be a presentation of all the projects carried out throughout the year, among which we highlight "Dark Light", the result of collaboration with Debajo del Sombrero, BIVO and "Autofabricantes". The first one will show the result of the residences carried out in the centre by autistic artists selected by the association Debajo del Sombrero throughout 2019, with projects arising from naturalness and spontaneity without conditioning. For its part, BIVO is an initiative that seeks to raise awareness about the need for responsible energy consumption, while investigating the manufacture of prototypes that allow the generation of energy through human movement. “Autofabricantes” is a space to investigate the technological advances applied to the elaboration of prostheses through open source, in addition to maintaining a community of exchange and support between participants and families, under the guidance and contribution of the “Exando una mano” group.

Works by Andrés Fernández, "Dark Light"

And you could not miss the use of the square. In addition to breakfast with some ‘roscon’ and hot chocolate as the first thing to open the day, from 6 p.m. the LED facade will be available to visitors, first with an interactive game of ping pong, and then a sample of the projects created for this device throughout the year by institutes, universities and academies.

This is just a preview of everything to enjoy the following Saturday in a meeting designed for everyone to participate. We invite you to consult the rest of the programming HERE and make a place on the agenda for this essential appointment.

The circle as critical device and the marker as contemporary catalyst

POSCA, the Japanese brand of water-based paint markers, has established itself since the 1980s as a central instrument within contemporary artistic practices associated with urban art, illustration, graphic design, and interdisciplinary experimentation. Its opaque, highly pigmented, fast-drying formula—compatible with surfaces as diverse as paper, wood, metal, glass, and textiles—has enabled a technical expansion that extends beyond the traditional studio, engaging public space, objects, and installation practices alike.

In this context, POSCA operates as more than a working tool; it functions as a material infrastructure for contemporary creation. It is a technical device that enables immediacy of gesture without sacrificing chromatic density or formal precision. Its versatility has contributed to the democratization of languages historically associated with painting, fostering a more horizontal circulation between professional and amateur practices.

This expanded dimension of the medium finds a particularly compelling conceptual framework in The Rolling Collection, a traveling exhibition curated by ADDA Gallery. The project proposes a collective investigation of the circular format, understood not merely as a formal container but as a symbolic structure and a field of spatial tension.

Historically, the circle has operated as a figure of totality, continuity, and return. Within the framework of The Rolling Collection, the circular format shifts away from its classical symbolic charge toward an experimental dimension, becoming a support that challenges the hegemonic rectangular frontality of the Western pictorial tradition. The absence of angles demands a reconsideration of composition, balance, and directional flow.

Rather than functioning as a simple formal constraint, this condition generates a specific economy of visual decisions. The curved edge intensifies the relationship between center and periphery, dissolves internal hierarchies, and activates both centrifugal and centripetal dynamics. The resulting body of work interrogates the very processes through which images are constructed.

Following its 2025 tour through Barcelona, Ibiza, Paris, London, and Tokyo, a selection of the exhibition is presented at Art Madrid, reinforcing its international scope and its adaptability to diverse cultural contexts. The proposal for Art Madrid’26 brings together artists whose practices unfold at the intersection of urban art, contemporary illustration, and hybrid methodologies: Honet, Yu Maeda, Nicolas Villamizar, Fafi, Yoshi, and Cachetejack.

While their visual languages vary—ranging from graphic and narrative approaches to chromatic explorations charged with gestural intensity—the curatorial framework establishes a shared axis: a free, experimental, and distinctly color-driven attitude. In this sense, color functions as a conceptual structure that articulates the works while simultaneously connecting them to the specific materiality of POSCA.

The marker’s inherent chromatic vibrancy engages in dialogue with the formal assertiveness of the circle, generating surfaces in which saturation and contrast take center stage. The tool thus becomes embedded within the exhibition discourse, operating as a coherent extension of the participating artists’ aesthetic vocabularies.

One of the project’s most significant dimensions is the active incorporation of the public. Within the exhibition space—activated by POSCA during Art Madrid’26—visitors will be invited to intervene on circular supports installed on the wall using POSCA markers, thereby symbolically integrating themselves into The Rolling Collection during its presentation in Madrid.

This strategy introduces a relational dimension that destabilizes the notion of the closed artwork. Authorship becomes decentralized, and the exhibition space transforms into a dynamic surface for the accumulation of gestures. From a theoretical standpoint, the project may be understood as aligning with participatory practices that, without compromising formal coherence, open the artistic dispositif to contingency and multiplicity.

The selection of POSCA as the instrument for this collective intervention is deliberate. Its ease of use, line control, and compatibility with multiple surfaces ensure an accessible experience without diminishing the visual potency of the outcome. In this way, the marker operates as a mediator between professional practice and spontaneous experimentation, dissolving technical hierarchies.

The title itself, The Rolling Collection, suggests a collection in motion—unfixed to a single space or definitive configuration. Its itinerant nature, combined with the incorporation of local interventions, transforms the project into an organism in continuous evolution. Within this framework, POSCA positions itself as a material catalyst for a transnational creative community. Long associated with urban scenes and emerging practices, the brand reinforces its identity as an ally of open, experimental, and collaborative processes.

POSCA x The Rolling Collection should not be understood merely as a collaboration between a company and a curatorial initiative; rather, it constitutes a strategic convergence of tool, discourse, and community. The project proposes a reflection on format, the global circulation of contemporary art, and the expansion of authorship, while POSCA provides the technical infrastructure that makes both individual works and collective experience possible.