RAÍCES AFUERA. PERFORMANCE CYCLE X ART MADRID'25

Art Madrid celebrates twenty years of contemporary art from March 5 to 9, 2025, at the Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles. During Art Week, it becomes an exhibition platform for national and international galleries and artists. In this edition, with the aim of providing a space for artists working in the realm of performance art, the fair presents Raíces Afuera, a performance cycle that explores notions of belonging and the need for rootedness in a contemporary world marked by fragmentation, displacement, and disconnection. Positioned within the fair as a critical and reflective space, the project challenges the individual’s relationship with their environment, community, and sense of identity.

PERFORMANCE: VOY RASPANDO LA HOJA Y LA VOZ. BY VALENTINA ALVARADO MATOS

March 7 | 19:00h. Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles.

Propiedades de una esfera paralela. Double Projection 16mm. 2020. Valentina Alvarado Matos.

voy raspando la hoja y la voz is a piece that merges image, text, and sound to create a sensory and conceptual journey through the memory of the landscape. Here, the voice becomes a fragmented narrative, a thread weaving together personal memories while reflecting on how landscapes shift, transform, and reconfigure over time and space. The journey, far from being linear, unfolds as a passage between the tangible and the symbolic, blurring the boundaries between the physical place and the language that describes it. The work also explores how certain territories are represented, described, or distorted from different perspectives, questioning dominant narratives. The space being explored is not just a territory, a garden, a park, or a forest—it is also a linguistic construction, a space reimagined through language. The piece invites us to reconsider the borders between the physical and the symbolic, between the real and the narrated.

Notas y apariciones. Notebook. 2021/2024. Valentina Alvarado Matos.

ABOUT VALENTINA ALVARADO MATOS

Valentina Alvarado Matos (Maracaibo, Venezuela, 1986) is an artist who explores the moving image with a critical eye towards diaspora, landscape and gesture. Her work has been exhibited in important spaces such as Artium, LIAF Biennial, IFF Rotterdam, Punto de Vista, Ambulante, Loop, Cinemateca Madrid, among others. She has been a resident at Hangar, La Escocesa, Cultura. Resident, LIFT Toronto and Matadero.

In 2024 she presents his work in Barcelona with Carlos Vasquez Mendez in the other here at La Capella and full face at La Virreina Centro de la Imagen. In addition to her artistic practice, she has taught at institutions such as Massana, Eina, Universitat de Barcelona, La Universidad del Zulia, LAV, CC Albareda, EICTV in Cuba, among others. Her films are included in the catalogues of distributors such as Light Cone, XCèntric and Hamaca, and her work has been included in the book Remains-Tomorrow Themes in Contemporary Latin American Abstraction by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill.

Valentina Alvarado Matos works in a variety of media, with an emphasis on the tactile qualities of film, and focuses on the materiality and fragmentation of the image. She is interested in how materials leave traces of time and memory. Film and ceramics, the disciplines in which she works, require manual processes that take time and patience, such as manipulating spools, kneading clay, or cutting and splicing strips of film. These deliberate methods contrast with rapid production, and both craft and film are closely linked to tactile gestures and processes in their conceptual and formal approaches. Collage occupies a central place in his work, allowing him to superimpose fragments of images and materials to explore and deconstruct symbolic meanings, particularly around diasporic identity, landscape and belonging. Superimposition is not only a technique in her studio, but also a narrative method that establishes dialogues between the landscape and the body, the personal and the political, the macro and the micro.

From July 7 to 9, 2025, the Balsera Palace will host the First Course on Collecting and Contemporary Art, an intensive 15-hour program that will explore the complex and fundamental question of taste in contemporary art. Organized by the Nebrija Institute of Arts and Humanities at Nebrija University and the Avilés City Council, in collaboration with 9915 — Association of Private Collectors of Contemporary Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art, the course offers a unique opportunity for analysis and debate on the dynamics that shape aesthetic and symbolic value in today’s art scene.

First Course on Collecting and Contemporary Art. Avilés, Asturias

The notion of taste, intrinsically tied to aesthetic judgments and power relations, has played a decisive role in the historical prominence of artists and artworks. However, contemporary art—marked by its breaking of conventions, diversity of media and techniques, and critical stance toward traditional canons—raises fundamental questions about the continued relevance of this concept.

This course will explore how the decisions made by key players in the art system—institutions, private collections, galleries, curators, and artists—continually redefine a field of taste shaped by aesthetic, symbolic, cultural, social, and political logics.

"¿But does it exist, and what is the prevailing taste of our time—so seemingly confused, fragmented, indecipherable?" - Omar Calabrese, The Neo-Baroque Era.

The academic program, directed by José Luis Guijarro Alonso, Director of the Master’s in Art Market and Related Business Management at Nebrija University, and Pablo Álvarez de Toledo, Head of the Department of Arts at Nebrija University and the Nebrija Institute of Arts and Humanities, will bring together a distinguished group of national experts—including collectors, critics, curators, gallery owners, and artists—whose contributions will address key issues in shaping aesthetic, symbolic, and market value in today’s art world.

PROGRAM

MONDAY, JULY 7

9:30 AM Registration.

10:00 AM Course Opening Nebrija University Avilés City Council Presented by Rosario López Meras – President of the Association of Contemporary Art Collectors, 9915, and Adrián Piera – President of the ICA, Institute of Contemporary Art.

10:30 AM Course Presentation By José Luis Guijarro Alonso – Art Historian and Anthropologist, Researcher, and Director of the Master’s in Art Market and Related Business Management at Nebrija University.

11:00 AM Coffee Break.

11:30 AM Panel Discussion The Taste of Private Collecting as a Prelude to History. Speakers: Candela Álvarez Soldevilla – Entrepreneur and Collector; Javier Quilis – INELCOM Collection; José Miguel Vegas Valle – Collector. Moderator: Luis Feás – Critic and Curator.

1:00 PM Lunch Break.

3:30 PM Individual Lecture On Good Taste in Contemporary Art. Speaker: Marisol Salanova – Curator and Art Critic, Director of Arteinformado.

4:45 PM Panel Discussion The Influence of Galleries in Shaping Contemporary Taste. Speakers: Elba Benítez – Gallerist; Ricardo Pernas – Gallerist (Arniches 26); Aurora Vigil-Escalera – Gallerist. Moderator: Rafael Martín – Coleccion@casamer.

6:00 PM End of Day.

6:30 PM Activity and Cocktail Visit to the Exhibition Asturian Artists in the Pérez Simón Collection – Avilés.

TUESDAY, JULY 8

10:00 AM Individual Lecture Contemporary (Bad) Taste: Kitsch, Camp, and Tacky. Speaker: Julio Pérez Manzanares – Autonomous University of Madrid.

11:00 AM Coffee Break.

11:30 AM Panel Discussion Institutions and the Formation of Contemporary Taste. Speakers: Virginia López – Artist, Founder of PACA_Proyectos Artísticos Casa Antonino; Julieta de Haro – Artistic Director of CentroCentro; Carlos Urroz – Director of Institutional Relations, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Moderator: Laura Gutiérrez – Director, School of Art of Oviedo.

1:00 PM Lunch Break.

3:30 PM Panel Discussion Beyond the Eye: The Taste for Ethical, Ecological, Social, or Political Concerns in Contemporary Art. Speakers: Semíramis González – Independent Curator; Eugenio Ampudia – Artist; Claudia Rodríguez-Ponga – Independent Curator. Moderator: Bárbara Mur Borrás – PhD in Fine Arts.

5:00 PM End of Day.

5:30 PM Activity Visit to the Studiolo Exhibition – Candela Álvarez Soldevilla Collection.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 9

9:30 AM Meeting with Asturian Artists Speakers: María Castellanos – Artist; Avelino Sala – Artist; Consuelo Vallina – Artist. Moderator: Pablo Álvarez de Toledo – Nebrija University.

11:00 AM Activity Visit to the Niemeyer Center – Avilés.

Course Closing Ceremony.

This course is designed for art professionals, collectors, researchers, and students seeking an in-depth analysis of the dynamics that shape taste and collecting practices in contemporary art. Adopting a critical and multidisciplinary perspective, it provides a unique opportunity to rigorously examine the aesthetic, symbolic, and structural factors that underpin the legitimization of contemporary art.