ESTUDIO IV

The Museo Reina Sofía presents the fourth edition of ESTUDIO, an annual programme which brings together work in a range of formats and is the outcome of research conducted by a series of artists and researchers whose practices are tied, either directly or dialogically, to the sphere of choreography and performance.

Under the title Second Skin. Subcutaneous, this latest edition approaches people’s relationship with the world through the skin, understood both in the literal sense, the integumentary system which covers the body of vertebrate animals, and figuratively, the layer or layers of experiences, affection, knowledge, tradition or bodily techniques determining appearance and relationships.

Under the skin, the fabric, the dress or the shawl, under the voice, the structure of language and the human appearance a subcutaneous surface stretches across which, like the skin, operates as a living organ. This second layer, furthermore, appeals to the archive of memories: that which is lived, inherited, learned, which is an unapproachable, hypodermic, printed archive in the lymphatic layer that acts as a membrane fostering symbiotic processes with the environment.

If, as Juhani Pallasmaa writes in The Eyes of the Skin. Architecture and the Senses (Wiley, 1996 [2012]), “all the senses, including vision, are extensions of the tactile sense, like specialisations of skin tissue”, then this programme calls upon us to haptically, sensually and sensorially move closer via works that experiment in and with the edges of the skin. The sonority of the voice, the physical vibration in space, reinforces and confuses the identification of the human voice as an animal roar. The movement of fabric on the body creates tension in the dialogue that dance, as a poetic movement and technical tradition, has held with certain textiles such as the Manila shawl or the tailed gown.

Therefore, in line with the dynamic of previous editions, ESTUDIO IV elicits a step-by-step journey over the course of an afternoon, offering three performances held in two spaces inside the Museo: the Nouvel Building’s Protocol Room, located in the building’s highest point, and Room 102 in the historic Sabatini Building, the site of the former San Carlos Hospital, founded in the eighteenth century. The programme is completed with ESTUDIO IV in Conversation, an encounter organised with dialogues between participating artists and speakers who collaborate in their processes.

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Ángela Bonadies is an artist whose work explores time and memory, that which resists, fades and which is out of place. Her practice sets out from photography, expanding towards mediums such as writing and drawing. She has participated in exhibitions that include A Universal History of Infamy (LACMA, Los Angeles and 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, 2017), La pesca (Galería Freijo, Madrid, 2019), Cruzando la línea (Cinemateca Distrital de Bogotá, 2019), De confines y confinamientos (Fundación Municipal Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador, 2020) and En las entrañas de la bestia (La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona, 2022).

Ángel Calvo Ulloa is an exhibition curator and art critic with a degree in Art History from the University of Santiago Compostela and an MA in Contemporary Art from the University of Vigo. He has curated exhibitions such as Complexo Colosso (Centro Internacional das Artes José de Guimarães [CIAJG], 2021) and Habitación. Archivo F.X. (Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo [CA2M], Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya [MNAC] and La Nau, 2018–2019). Moreover, he has carried out projects for other institutions such as Artium Museoa in Vitoria-Gasteiz, the Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo (MARCO), the Centro de Cultura de España in Mexico (CCEMX) and La Casa Encendida in Madrid, among others. Together with Juan Canela, he has published Desde lo curatorial. Conversaciones, experiencias y afectos (consonni, 2020).

Javiera de la Fuente is an artist and flamenco dancer who explores languages in close proximity to performance in unconventional stage spaces, combining critical reflection and dance in hybrid formats such as the performance lecture. She has performed with this format in the following spaces: Bergen Assembly (Aire del Mar. Canciones de la guerra social contemporánea, 2019), the European Forum For Advanced Practices at the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in Móstoles (El drama de una realidad Sur, 2019) and the Federico García Lorca Foundation in Granada (Una niebla invisible, 2022).

Kike García is a dancer, choreographer and embroiderer. He began learning taekwondo at the age of four and continued towards contemporary dance, butoh and flamenco, bringing together all of these languages of movement. A graduate from the HZT-UdK Inter-University Centre for Dance in Berlin, he has presented his work with different choreographers in Reykjavik, Madrid, Casablanca, Athens and Berlin. Furthermore, he has transferred his investigations in the field of movement, dance and performance over to embroidery. 

Pablo Marte is an artist, writer and researcher who has made audiovisual and film pieces such as Imperial Eyes (2015), Mañana Goodbye (with Marion Cruza Le Bihan, 2016) and Venceremos (with Taxio Ardanaz, 2021). With consonni, he carried out the project El problema está en el medio (2013), the theatre work Again Again(st) (2013) and Pretty Woman (2014), a fictional essay in book format and a curatorial work featuring ten interventions by other artists. Moreover, he has collaborated with researchers like Isabel de Naverán, Aimar Arriola and Idoia Zabaleta. In 2021, he was involved in founding Basilika, a space of cultural critique podcasts, where he produces the programmes Sector Conflictivo and Informe Infame.

Fran MM Cabeza de Vaca is a composer, sound artist and music teacher. He has premiered instrumental, electronic and performance pieces at various national and international festivals, and as a composer and performer he has participated in the stage pieces La Casa, by Aitana Cordero, and ECLIPSE : MUNDO, by Paz Rojo. His audiovisual work has led to his involvement with the ZEMOS98 collective. Since 2012, he has worked closely with the poet María Salgado, most notably on the trilogy of audio-textile works Jinete Último Reino Frag.1-3 (2017–2021). As a performer, he is currently an active part of Fanfarria Transfeminista (Tansfeminist Fanfare) in Madrid.

Alejandra Pombo Su is an artist with a degree in Visual Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid, broadening her studies with the MA in Digital Arts from the Pompeu Fabra University and the Independent Studies Programme at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA). Her work moves between the visual arts, film and performance arts, and she has participated in projects such as What is Third (La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2015) and Mugatxoan (LABoral, in Gijón, Fundação de Serralves, in Porto, and Arteleku de Donostia, 2004–2009). She has also carried out residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida, USA) and the PACT Zollverein (Essen, Germany), among others.

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