As every year, Art Madrid organizes activities focused on contemporary art that take place throughout the month of February and with which the fair invites the public to participate in a much more active way. In this edition, the program is focused on contemporary video art, especially concerning the most recent Spanish media creation.

The wide range of activities, organized by Art Madrid and curated by the PROYECTOR Festival, includes ranging from professional workshops, conversations with artists, lectures, master classes to curated screening programs; as well as is maintained with the collaboration of Obra Social "La Caixa" and the Community of Madrid, through its spaces CaixaForum Madrid and Sala Alcalá 31 respectively. In addition, the program has the support of Cervezas La Virgen, One Shot Hotels and the Culture and Sports Area of Madrid City Council. With this program, Art Madrid becomes a platform for new trends in video and media art, inviting everyone to participate in the most recent contemporary art movements.

Although it is more than 60 years old, video art is understood as an artistic expression, presently it is still a discipline, not too very well-known and important in the most frequent cultural circuits. However, we are facing an expanding, growing moment of these forms of creation, in fact, video creation is one of the increasingly recurrent languages among contemporary authors. The program welcomes new projects that belong to this discipline as well as its knowledge and value, qualities that over time are reflected in the ephemeral character of this type of works and the circumstances surrounding its collection.

"Sweet dreams are made of this" (2016) frame by Carlos Aires.

The activities are presented under the curatorship of Mario Gutiérrez Cru, director of the ground-breaking PROYECTOR festival, a must-see event that takes place in Madrid consisting of audio-visual creation and its multiple elements that have worked hand to hand with hundreds of artists, gallerists, collectors and cultural institutions for more than ten years. The Program is planned into two large segments, each one organized in one of the two locations: CaixaForum Madrid and the Sala Alcalá 31 Auditorium.

On the one hand, the "58 formas de mirar el cuerpo" workshop will take place at CaixaForum throughout Monday 11 and Thursday 14 of February, a unique opportunity of understanding not only new media arts but also their relationship with performing arts by the hand of the renowned creators Elena Córdoba and David Benito. Reflecting specifically on the different ways of understanding and performing dance practices, is a workshop aimed at investigating the experimental, expressive and semiotic possibilities of body language and its relationship with space.

"EverdayMasks" (2017) frame by Paula Lafuente.

On the other hand, the Sala Alcalá 31 Auditorium will host, from Thursday, February 21 to Saturday, February 23, conversations surrounding video art and media art screening sessions. The first conversation will bring together specialists such as Teresa Sapey, Eva Ruiz, Marta Pérez Ibáñez, Idoia Hormaza de Prada and Enrich Abogados in a talk aimed at creating discussion and a thinking forum. Open to all, in this activity the participation of the architect and designer Teresa Sapey is worth reminding, who will not only explain what factors may motivate buying video art but will also accompany us in an exclusive screening session about her media collection; an avant-garde collection that will provide the following artworks:

Candice Breitz with Becoming Cameron (2003), edición 2/3

Hussein Chalayan with Afterwords (2000), edición 3/5

Julian Opie with Sara Undressing (2004), edición 2/4

Marina Abramovic with Nude with Skeleton (2002-2005), edición 4/5

Eugenio Ampudia with Fuego Frío 2 (2004), edición 5/6

"Heteronímia" (2017) frame by Márcia Beatriz Granero.

The other appointments, on Friday the 22nd and Saturday the 23rd, include a conversation with the artists Eugenio Ampudia, Mateo Maté, Carlos Aires, Democracia, Cristina Garrido and Rubén Martín de Lucas who will present their media artworks in a dialogue with the public moderated by the artist and researcher Daniel Villegas, offering a unique opportunity to get to know directly their creative processes. Other highlight is the master class by Rogelio López Cuenca, one of the most outstanding national creators in the media art field. Also, the program includes two screening sessions curated by PROYECTOR: under the titles "Del cuerpo presente al cuerpo performativo" and "Ciudades" will present suggestive media works by about thirty international artists.

With this broad Parallel Program, Arte Madrid is fully committed to the most recent video art forms and narratives, which are as varied as they are complex and enriching. Thus, the fair contributes to the promotion and knowledge of the growth video art creation that, without doubt, connected especially with our current form of communication.

All the activities in detail in the Activities section

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.