UVNT MAHOU TALKS 2024

An Wei develops his artistic activity through painting, but assimilated as a means, not as an end. He understands it as something that expands in space, beyond the limits of the canvas and, within this expansion, he includes the viewer as another element, making him a participant or, better said, an accomplice of the scene he is observing. His interest is focused on generating immersive environments and experiences with his pictorial installations. An Wei has recently exhibited in institutional projects such as 'Mudar costumbre' (Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Móstoles, 2021); 'Templo' (Circuitos de Artes Plásticas, Madrid, 2020), and 'Yupi' (Sala de Arte Joven, Madrid, 2022), as well as in gallery projects such as 'Todas las partes blandas se perderán' (Berlin and Seville, 2022), 'Vis a siV' (Pas une orange, Barcelona, 2021) and 'Studio redivivo' (Ex Dogana, Rome, 2019).

Esther Rizo, teacher and researcher, is a co-founding member of the techno-artistic collective XenoVisual Studies and the working group XenoImage Dataset at Medialab Matadero. She enjoys mentoring initiatives for the integration of women, art and new technologies such as the XVS Center project supported by the Ministry of Equality. In 2021 she published a book on the necessary transition from human-centered design to life-centered design. In the last year, as a doctoral student at UCM, she has been researching the imaginaries of the strange that emerge from the use of information technologies. She has been part of the Transmediale 2024 research workshop and has published works and xenofeminist texts on how the alien and the technological intersect in the visual sphere, proposing new ways of seeing and understanding the world, challenging and expanding the limits of the real and the fictions of becoming.

JORDI PALLARÈS (Tarragona, 1967) has been living in Mallorca for more than twenty years, where he complements his teaching work with research and curatorship. He is co-founder of INDAGUE (Spanish Association for Research and Dissemination of Graffiti and Urban Art), and partner of the IAC (Institute of Contemporary Art) in its delegation in the Balearic Islands. Since 2012, he co-directs with Javier Siquier VB_exposición visible, a curatorial project on paper.

His current line of research focuses on those (artistic) practices that occur in the public sphere, in its different ways of (self) representation and performativity, especially those in which the body, its movement and positioning in space determines discourses of emancipation. A horizontal and relational exchange in which writing transits and negotiations end up being necessary learning strategies.

Founder of Global Design & Innovation Trends Unit, she is a researcher, curator and disseminator specialized in global design connected to social and cultural movements of the 21st century. She works between Madrid-Milan-Paris. She collaborates as a cultural communicator with Poltrona Frau, Bang&Olufsen, Rimadesio, &Tradition, BTicino, Lladró, Citröen, Simon Electric, Actiu, Salone del Mobile Milano, Danish Design+. He is "Design Talents and Trends Forecaster" for Maison&Objet Paris and directs the research "Atlas de la Cultura del Diseño en España" with the Ministry of Culture and Sport and MDF. He has been jury of the National Design Awards in Spain 23-24 and IF Design Award Germany and taught at Poli.Design-Politecnico di Milano, where he develops the Poli.DesignTrendsLaboratory, IE University Architecture & Design and Nebrija University.

She writes about design for El País, ICON Design, AD, ELLE Decoration or Diseño Interior and curates exhibitions on new narratives of design and architecture.

Paco Barragán holds an international PhD from the University of Salamanca (USAL) with residence at the Alvar Aalto University of Helsinki. His doctoral thesis "Narrativity as discourse, credibility as condition: art, politics and media today" won the Extraordinary Prize to the doctoral thesis of the year 2019-2020 from USAL. Barragán has curated 96 international exhibitions and has been among others co-curator of the Prague Biennial (2005) and Toronto's Nuit Blanche (2016). He has worked with artists of the stature of Erwin Olaf, Santiago Sierra, Lee Bul, Juan Dávila or Tania Bruguera. He has been co-director of the seminar "Global Art Fairs" for the Sotheby's Institute of Art (SIA) in New York (2022). His publications include The Art to Come/El arte que viene (2002, Subastas Siglo XXI), The Art Fair Age/La era de las ferias (2008, CHARTA), From Roman Feria to Global Art Fair, From Olympia Festival to Neo-Liberal Biennial: On the 'Biennialization' of Art Fairs and the 'Fairization' of Biennials (2020, Artpulse Editions) and co-editor of The Changing Meaning of Kitsch: From Rejection to Acceptance (2023, Palgrave Macmillan)

Julieta Wibel is a work of art and her life, a performance. All her life she has been an art geek, becoming her only true love. She studied Industrial Design Engineering where she fell in love with the Aesthetics of the Arts, after that she shared her interests in social networks which led her to work in creative direction for artists such as Dellafuente, Veintiuno, Sofia Coll...

Julieta, as a communicator, has touched on topics that concern us at a generational level such as teenage angst, fast fashion, the aesthetics of AI and how much she is in favor of giving cringe.

As an artist, he doesn't want to set limits for himself and it's all about exploring himself, other artists and a generation. However, in the face of the tired society, Julieta reflects on personal projects such as HEDONISM and the need to give us a few minutes of reflection and conscious hedonism in the eye of the hurricane of this liquid modernity.

D. in Art History from the Complutense University of Madrid, he furthered his studies in Philosophy (UNED). Specialist in contemporary art, gender theory, aesthetics, cultural policies and visual culture.  In addition to teaching and research experience in the field of aesthetics and contemporary art, she has curated works such as Common People: Visiones, Versiones del Presente (2009), Viaje alrededor de Carlos Berlanga (2009), La persona y el verbo: veinte años después de la muerte de Jaime Gil de Biedma (2010), El papel de la Movida (2013), En Plan Travesti (y radical) (2018) or Flores para Juan Hidalgo (2021). He has published, among others, the following books and research works: Pospornografía; Estética y comunicación en la era viral (2021); Juan Hidalgo y zaj. Arte subversivo durante el franquismo (2018); Mirar con un ojo cerrado (2018); Una temporada en lo moderno (2011) or Costus: You Are a Star (2008)

Giovanna Caruso Fendi was born in Rome, from the well-known family of fashion entrepreneurs. Her mother Alda, the youngest of the five Fendi sisters, passed on to her a great passion for contemporary art. After studying law, she worked in the legal offices of the Fendi company, also serving as Administrative Director for Fendi and Fendissime. In 2000 she became Board Member of the Alda Fendi Esperimenti Foundation, with the task of curator of relations with artists and promoter
of the cultural development of Rome. From 2004 to 2005 she was Chairman of Management Board of the record label “20th nervous breakdown” SRL. In 2011 she recorded "GCF - Objects of Affection", a brand that produces design objects in limited series. She has always had a special bond with the city of Rome, which he loves deeply and today, after having strongly believed in her project, she is Sole Administrator and Founding Member of the Benefit Company, promoter of FOROF.
Giovanna Caruso Fendi has carved out an active role of passionate and motivated promoter of the cultural pole. “Protecting, enhancing, supporting and promoting the artistic and cultural heritage of  Rome is not just a duty, but a sense of responsibility that belongs to me. My desire is to be able to talk to everyone and spread, nationally and internationally, the universal language of art”.

The work of ceramist Julio Galindo is a platform from which to propose a new mythology that explores terms such as the sacred, the spiritual and the religious. His pieces question concepts such as religiosity or sanctity, trying to update these notions from a contemporary point of view. His intention is to show that there is the possibility of finding profoundly existential aspects in our immediate environment, which undoubtedly involves raising to the level of sacred things that are not, but probably should be. 

Galindo studied Fine Arts at the University of Seville, where he majored in Painting and Engraving. Since his first contact with ceramics in Florence, his sculptures have been shown in institutions such as the Centro de Arte Tomás y Valiente, Fuenlabrada, Madrid; Centro Cultural La Carolina in Jaén or Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Florence.

Ianko López is a manager, editor and critic specialized in culture and visual arts, and has previously worked in the field of consultancy. He is a regular contributor to various media outlets writing about art, design, architecture and culture. Among the publications he writes for are El País Semanal, ICON, Babelia, Vanity Fair, Traveler and El Periódico de España.

Pablo Purón Carrillo, illustrator and graduate in Advertising and Public Relations from the URJC in Madrid is part of the multidisciplinary team Boa Mistura, a multidisciplinary team with roots in graffiti born in late 2001 in Madrid. Their work is mainly developed in public spaces.

"We understand our work as a tool to transform the city and create links between people. We feel a responsibility towards the city and the time in which we live".

Dea Gómez (Salamanca, Spain 1989) and Diego Omil (Pontevedra, Spain 1988), graduates in Fine Arts from the University of Salamanca. They have been working together since 2012 under the name "Los Bravú", a Galician word used to refer to the smell of animals. They have developed their career through contemporary experimental comics in which drawing, painting, sculpture and photography are interspersed.

Beginning with their residency at the Spanish Academy in Rome, they opened new horizons by developing a multidisciplinary exhibition project that, leaving the comic aside, reflects on the traditional rupture of history through aesthetic and narrative resources that have emerged and developed within the limits of the internet. They address recurring themes, representations and generational portraits within the framework of the "millennials". Topics such as how the public image is generated within the internet, how reality is seen, manipulated or encoded in the digital space, along with a research process around the relationship between different artistic disciplines and the web.

Laura Lasheras (Calahorra, La Rioja, 1979) is one of the leading ceramists on the Spanish scene. She works ceramics in an experimental way, creating collections of objects and sculptures that play with the limit between the utilitarian and the conceptual, and that establish a very personal aesthetic vision: poetic and pastel but with a creepy touch.

Ceramics. Art Brut. Surrealism. Tradition and modernity.  His work is evocative. He transforms glazed ceramics into pure poetry. A millenary material in impossible forms. It is pure feeling. He is inspired by personal experiences and the experiences of the past. She is moved by ancient ceramics and African art. And that is why she says that ceramics has allowed her to connect with her most primitive side. For her, everyone should work with their hands. She says it is rewarding, liberating and very pleasurable. She also mixes ceramics with textile materials, she says because she is interested in the confrontation of materials. And she has exhibited in Spain and abroad: Paris, Tokyo, Miami, Washington, Seoul, Monterrey, Milan.

Teresa Sapey describes herself as an "unclassifiable architect".
She is the CEO and founder of the international design and architecture studio "Teresa Sapey + Partners", which she runs together with her daughter Francesca Heathcote in Madrid.

Born in Italy, she has been designing spaces all over the world for more than thirty years, and always with the the world and always with the same leitmotiv: "we design spaces with feelings". Teresa Sapey graduated in Architecture from the Polytechnic University of Turin in 1985 and obtained an of Turin in 1985 and obtained a degree in Fine Arts at the Parson School of Design in Paris. In 1986, Teresa was awarded a scholarship by the Ministry of Public Instruction in Rome to pursue a Master's degree in Architecture, focusing on workspace design and ergonomics. She obtained the CEAA (Certificats d'Études Approfondies en Architecture) at the UPA6 (University of Paris-La Villette) and in 1990 she founded her own studio in Madrid. Founded his own studio in Madrid. Since 1999 she has also been a member of the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects, London). Each space with Teresa Sapey's stamp has its own identity, its own personality, full of color, mix of textures, materials? All dynamic and full of vitality.

Like an urban landscape in constant motion, Tilt's work inventories the traces of a shared experience, scattered across time and space. Tilt is a descendant of the counter-culture of graffiti, creating works in which the boundaries between cities and landscapes merge into a gestural painting.

Movement and matter come together in a philosophy of the trace, tracking our collective memory. Relating images of the mural writings he collects during his travels, he continues to develop his creativity by weaving links between urban and cultural territories . As a tie between multiple worlds, the wall as a support and as a motif remains at the centre of a pictorial reflection wavering between abstraction and figuration. At the crossroads of human interaction, the wall raises as an unusual palimpsest where the past and the present intersect and it is on these foundations that Tilt creates the basis of an archaeology of the future. 

TILT has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Les Abattoirs in Toulouse and at the Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rabat. His works are part of the collections of the Mucem in Marseille, the Pera Museum in Istanbul and of the Montresso* Art Foundation in Marrakesh. In 2018, he was given the award L'art est vivant - Promesses during the Art Paris Fair at the Grand Palais in Paris.

Studio Animal is a design studio based in Madrid and Barcelona specialized in interior design and ephemeral architecture projects. It is directed by Javier Jiménez Iniesta, a graduate in architecture from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Alicante, with honors in 2007. He combines his professional activity with teaching and academic research. He is currently Program Leader of the Master in Creative Retail Management at the European Institute of Design and guest professor at the Elisava School of Design and the University of Monterrey.

La Coruña. Architect, critic and editor. As a critic and editor his work has focused on the exploration of contemporary reality as well as intervention in heritage. Curator/director of the XI Iberoamerican Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism. International Doctor (PhD) with the qualification outstanding Cum Laude. Extraordinary Doctoral Thesis Award by the ETSAM in 2015. Pensioner of the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome 2013-2014. AECID.  Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Grantee of the ART_EX program 2014-2015. AECID. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Art critic at ABC Cultural, 

He is currently a professor in the Department of Architectural Projects at the ETSAM. He has been professor of Analysis, Theory and Criticism at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM) within the subjects of Introduction to Architecture, Analysis of Architecture and Master Habilitante since 2010. Head of area of the Official Master of the UPM: MACA (Master of Architectural Communication) and professor in 2017-2018 of the MPPAA (Master of Advanced Architectural Projects)

He has been a professor of Music Video Editing and Directing at TAI school, and taught workshops and seminars at the Madrid Film Institute, Rey Juan Carlos University and UZAR.Dan Barreri is a young Spanish audiovisual filmmaker.

With a long career in the music video world, he has received the Independent Music Award for Best Music Video and a Vevo Award in 2015, the Audience Award at the MovieScreenPro Festival in Los Angeles in 2019 and a nomination for Telemundo's Latin America Music Awards in 2022.

Fernando Castro Flórez (Plasencia, 1964). Professor of Aesthetics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He has written in cultural supplements of newspapers such as El País, Diario 16, El Independiente, El Sol or El Mundo. For the last fifteen years he has been working as an art critic for ABC Cultural. He is a regular contributor to publications such as Revista de Occidente and Descubrir el arte. Member of the advisory committee of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Curator of exhibitions of artists such as Miró, Picasso, Dalí, Cragg, David Nash, Nacho Criado, Warhol, Francis Bacon, Imi Knoebel, Julian Opie, Fernando Sinaga, Anselm Kiefer, Miquel Navarro or Bernardí Roig. He has written books such as Elogio de la pereza. Notas para una estética del cansancio (1992), El texto íntimo. Kafka, Rilke, Pessoa (1993).

Multidisciplinary artist (Granada 1997) Graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Granada and Master in Artistic Production from the University of Malaga. First prize BMW Painting digital art 2022 and resident of the XXI promotion of the Antonio Gala Foundation. She has participated in several exhibitions including Hypergarden in the Festival Lux de artes lumínicas de La Térmica in Malaga for its tenth anniversary or Hipermateria.scd in Proyector, moving image festival in Madrid.

Irene's work encompasses new media with a special focus on 3D. In her artistic practice she investigates the relationships that arise at the intersection and hybridization of material and virtual spaces where the sculptural coexists with the screen using techniques such as photogrammetry, 3D printing, iron welding or 3D animation. His concern about the immediate virtual present focuses on the construction and perception of space, error and consciousness.

Born in France and based in Madrid, this new media creative works in the field of augmented reality, exploring the possibilities of technology and how it can alter and enhance our perceptions of reality. Her personal works question our future and our digital identities.

Johanna Jaskowska works in the field of augmented reality, exploring the possibilities of technology and how it can alter and enhance our perceptions of reality. Drawing on cutting-edge technology, she draws inspiration from the rich worlds of film, photography, beauty and the concepts of future and identity.

The scope of her unique vision is enormous. Driven by curiosity and restless creativity, Johanna Jaskowska continues to look to the future and work at the forefront of new and emerging technologies.

Doctor in History and Arts from the University of Granada. Degree in Art History from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.  Specialist in contemporary art market and artistic and cultural management, teaching and research for thirty years, activity that began at the Frick Art Reference Library in New York.She is a member of the following associations: The International Art Market Studies Association TIAMSA, Women in Visual Arts MAV and the Institute of Contemporary Art IAC, of which she was president between 2020 and 2023.

She is part of several research groups: the TIAMSA subcommittee Art market and collecting in Portugal, Spain and Brazil (AMC_PSB), and Ecosistema del Arte, inter-university, and between 2015 and 2018 has also contributed to the group Transversal Studies in Contemporary Creation at the Nebrija University
at Nebrija University. She has been a researcher specializing in the art market in Spain and Portugal for the publishers De Gruyter, Berlin, and Bloomsbury, London, and has participated as a section editor in the publication of the reference book Bloomsbury Art Markets.
 

Ferreiro Mederos, a graduate in Fine Arts with a major in Graphic Design from the Aalto School of Design in Helsinki, is part of the disciplinary group Boa Mistura with roots in graffiti born at the end of 2001 in Madrid. 

"We understand our work as a tool to transform the city and create links between people. We feel a responsibility towards the city and the time we live in."

Vicente Prieto Gaggero (1989) is a visual artist and sculptor who, through the search and manipulation of the earthy and irregular qualities of clay, conducts experiments that give form to thoughts and emotions evoked by contrasting new methodologies with the primitive expression of the material, building objects and imaginary.

Through the conjugation of the four elements - earth, water, air and fire - and passing through different possible states of matter, his work traverses the heritage of mystery, love, beauty, wonder and contemporary human conflicts, finding a dynamic language between the material's past with new forms and meanings, drawing inspiration from pre-Columbian pottery and including allusions to art nouveau, neo-pop and cyberpunk.

José Luis Romo (Madrid, 1983) is a journalist and cultural manager. He began his career in the supplement La Luna de Metrópoli, of EL MUNDO, where he coordinated the Scene and Art sections. During his time at Unidad Editorial, he wrote regularly in the sections of Culture, M2, PAPEL and the supplement La Esfera de los libros. Throughout his career as a journalist he has also collaborated with publications such as TELVA, Shangay or Rockdelux.

As a professional specializing in the performing arts, he has collaborated with institutions such as the Festival de Otoño, the Fundación Juan March, the Festival de Mérida and the Centro Dramático Nacional, where he presented his second Jornadas Plásticas meeting on light on stage and wrote the prologue for Iñigo Guardamino's book, Metallica. As a teacher, he has taught in the Master's Degree in Cultural Management at La Fábrica.