With the winter around the corner, we make a brief review of how the artists got inspired by this season for their works. These dates are usually associated inevitably with the end of the year and the abundant parties, but the beginning of winter has traditionally been a time celebrated by many cultures as it gives way to a period of growth of days and a stage of preparation for the upcoming cycle. Even Greek mythology has a story for this phenomenon. Demeter, goddess of life and earth, separated from her daughter Persephone, who had been abducted by Hades and condemned to remain in the underworld, agreed to spend half of the year in her company and the other half on Olympus. Demeter was sad in the months when she was not with Persephone, which correspond to autumn and winter, leaving the earth neglected and withered, as opposed to spring and summer, time spent with her daughter.

Camille Pissarro, “Avenue de l’Opera. Efecto Nieve 1”

From the classicism, winter was approached with naturalistic perspective. This approach goes through the different artistic branches and has also served to feed the nineteenth-century narrative that represents this season in a raw way to underline the social differences that many characters of the literature of the time should pass through. As for the visual arts, authors opted for more realistic expressions, an exercise that often served as pictorial analysis on the depiction of the natural state, the changes of light, the reproduction of textures, volumes... in scenes dominated by snow in the rural environment.

Stepan Kolesnikoff, “On the way to market”, 1942

The winter, present with its hardest, implacable and almighty face, composes a mental image fueled to a great extent by the literature of the late nineteenth century as well as by the recurrent representation of realistic painting that began to pay less attention to elitist themes. The flight of pictorial productions of religious content or portraits by order gave way to a real concern for society, for the situation of the individual in their daily lives and the expression of an authentic and not always docile life that required, among other things, facing the winter in unfavourable circumstances. In this naturalistic trend, one sees the will to change the focus of attention of the aristocracy to the ordinary people, and to elaborate an egalitarian discourse that does not highlight the powerful over the weak but treats all individuals equally.

Jason Paul freerunning in Harbin, China © David Robinson

Our perception of this season has changed in recent decades. The linking of these dates with the grand celebrations make up an inseparable whole in which consumerism has absorbed the beginning of the season and almost goes unnoticed. The current representation of winter connects with snowy prints, red lights and smiles on the face. There is, in all this, a search for the ideal beauty, a compositional artifice that floods all our behaviours in society and reaches, even in a false way, the very strength of nature. Today the winter, after having surpassed in the arts the traditional pictorialism, is represented mainly through photography, a discipline that dares to recreate nature in a more wild and challenging. In fact, documentary photography is a very exploited line in our days, and the result is images of high visual impact.

ABIERTO INFINITO. LO QUE EL CUERPO RECUERDA. CICLO DE PERFORMANCE X ART MADRID'26

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.

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.

PERFORMANCE: OFF LINE. JIMENA TERCERO

March 7 | 7:00 p.m. Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles.

OFF LINE is a performance piece that reflects on the fragility of the body in the digital age. Our relationship with the outside world is mediated by a screen, which distances us further and further from physical contact and interpersonal relationships. Focusing on creating a digital identity causes the body to distance itself from the physical world and lose its memory.

Hyperconnectivity and fragmented attention lead to a more passive physical existence, characterised by reduced spontaneous movement and less direct sensory interaction. This raises fundamental questions: how is the concept of presence redefined when our relationship with the world relies on technological mediation? What will the experience of the body be like in a future where 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 stored digitally. The fragmentation of physical experience and the primacy of technological representation create a scenario in which, although the body is visible, it is displaced from its original function as an agent of perception and action.

This conceptual framework invites reflection on the impact of digitisation on corporeality, memory and social relationships, and on the vulnerability and inertia experienced by bodies in environments that are increasingly mediated by technology.

ABOUT JIMENA TERCERO

Jimena Tercero (Madrid, 1998) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the boundaries of the female body, identity, and the subconscious. She uses performance, video, and painting to address concepts such as memory, tangibility, and play. Tercero trained in painting with Lola Albín and in analog photography at Cambridge in 2014. She studied audiovisual direction from 2018 to 2020 with renowned figures such as Víctor Erice and the production company El Deseo. She is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Creative Direction at ELISAVA. She completed her performance training at La Juan Gallery. In 2011, she was part of the children's jury at the Isfahan Film Festival in Iran.

Her directed works include Private (2016) and Paranoid (2021), which were exhibited at the Aspa Contemporary Gallery. She has also worked on projects such as Yo, mi, me, conmigo (2023, Teatros del Canal), Inside Voices (2021, Conde Duque with Itziar Okariz), and La última regla (La Juan Gallery). She has directed fashion films for publishers and brands such as Puma, Dior, and Dockers. She has also provided art direction for artists such as Sen Senra and Jorge Drexler. Additionally, she directed the documentary Also Here for ArtforChange–La Caixa. She presented Out of View (Nebula Gallery), EDEN (White Lab Gallery), and Navel Bite (Sinespacio). She participates in residencies such as Medialab with Niño de Elche and Miguel Álvarez Fernández. In 2025, she will be part of the Special Jury of the Asian Film Fest in Barcelona and the International Cultural Museum of Assilah Art Residency in Morocco).