Notes related to Spain

Barcelona's MACBA presents I Have Learned to Swim on Dry Land, the first monographic exhibition that a Spanish institution dedicates to Cuban-American artist and activist Coco Fusco (New York, USA, 1960). The exhibition, titled after the opening sentence of Virgilio Peña's short story Swimming, offers a journey through several thematic nuclei revolving around words, language, and silence, as well as the semiotics and symbolism entwined with these concepts.

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa (Guatemala City, Guatemala, 1978) has long warranted a mid-career exhibition such as the one hosted by the Museo Reina Sofía. His ongoing activity and presence in institutions and performances over recent years have positioned the Guatemalan artist as a key figure in the development and visibility of contemporary Central American art beyond its geographic framework.

Until the end of September, the Galician city of Pontevedra is reviving its Art Biennial, an event that has been held since 1991 and now reaches its thirty-second edition under the slogan Volver a ser humanos (Becoming Human Again). Under this premise, Antón Castro, along with Agar Ledo and Iñaki Martínez Antelo, have curated a proposal centered on war, violence, and the traces they leave in society and humanity.

Alberto Baraya (Bogotá, Colombia, 1968) presents his project Llatina i Mestral (Catalan for Lateen and Mistral)as part of the B Biennial in Majorca. The work begins with a performative action in which the artist paints directly onto a sail while at sea. The sail becomes a canvas that captures both a physical journey and a conceptual one.

Priscilla Monge (San José, Costa Rica, 1968) arrives at the Galician Center for Contemporary Art (CGAC) with her exhibition Cuestiones de vida o muerte (Matters of Life and Death). This show brings together works from all stages of the Costa Rican artist’s career, establishing her as a key figure in Central American art through her commitment to social critique.

Sofía Crespo (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1991) often centers her work on the use of biology-inspired technology. In her exploration of the common ground between artificial intelligence and the way it generates images, on the one hand, and human perception of the environment, on the other, there is a turning point in the Argentine artist's practice.

The Official College of Architects of Madrid (COAM) is hosting No tan lejos (Not So Far Away), an exhibition by Emilio Pemjean (Santiago, Chile, 1971), which continues to explore his characteristic artistic approach that blends photography, design, architecture, and painting. In this exhibition, the Chilean artist presents a series of imagined and reconstructed spaces, virtually brought back to life through memory, which makes their reconstruction possible.

The Museum of America is hosting an exhibition of paintings by Juan Carlos Santoscoy (Guadalajara, Mexico, 1973) in its La Tapada gallery, open until the end of the month. Titled Algoritmos del caos (Algorithms of Chaos), the show features a selection of the artist’s most recent large-scale works, which engage with pressing themes in contemporary art such as global warming and the overexploitation of natural resources.

Cave Art Centre of Cantabria 'Alberto I de Monaco'  in Puente Viesgo is hosting its first-ever contemporary art exhibition.

MARCO, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Vigo, presents Savia y sangre (Sap and Blood), a solo exhibition by Laura Lio (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1967), which reveals the artist’s social vision and commitment through her work. Lio's practice involves a meticulous observation of certain organic and natural processes in search of a kind of internal order. With a poetic approach, the Argentine artist based in Spain challenges this natural structure through visual language and words.

By Álvaro de Benito

The Casa de México Foundation in Spain presents Guadalupe. La Virgen de México (Guadalupe. The Virgin of Mexico), an extensive program of exhibitions and activities centered around one of Mexico's most iconic and anthropologically significant figures. In addition to lectures and various screenings, the program revolves around two main themes: craftsmanship and popular culture on one hand, and anthropology on the other.

The Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid is hosting the exhibition By Pass. La frontera del signo (By Pass. The Frontier of the Sign), a comprehensive presentation of the work of Lotty Rosenfeld (Santiago, Chile, 1943–2020), a key figure in Latin American video art whose practice emerged at the intersection of political activism and the creation of images as spaces of expression and freedom.

The Reina Sofía Museum, in collaboration with BIENALSUR, presents the exhibition Resistencia. Una selección de video sudamericano (Resistance: A Selection of South American Video). Curated by Argentine art historian Diana Wechsler, artistic director of BIENALSUR, the exhibition offers two complementary ways to engage with the works, both situated around the museum’s cinema hall.

The Casa de México Foundation in Spain is hosting Cuando habla la luz (When Light Speaks), the first retrospective of Graciela Iturbide (Mexico City, 1942) since she received the 2025 Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts. Curated by Juan Rafael Coronel Rivera, the exhibition brings together 115 works spanning from 1972 to 2017.

The Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid presents Somos raíces (We Are Roots), an exploration of the creative worlds of Santiago Yahuarcani (Pucaurquillo, Peru, 1960) and Nereyda López (Pebas, Peru, 1965), two of the most prominent figures in contemporary indigenous art. Both artists draw from the oral traditions and cosmologies of their respective peoples—the Uitoto in Yahuarcani’s case, and the Tikuna and Cocama in López’s—to give voice to languages of resistance.

Manuel Segade (La Coruña, Spain, 1977) celebrates two years this month at the helm of Spain’s largest public museum of contemporary art. Since taking over as director of the Reina Sofía, he has implemented a series of exhibition and institutional strategies that have gradually shaped the museum’s strong personality and clear direction. In addition to progress on gender and feminist issues, decolonial thinking plays an important role in his vision—always from a perspective that necessarily looks to both sides of the Atlantic. Segade never seems to lose his enthusiasm, as evidenced by his expression and way of speaking. He welcomes us into his office at the Reina Sofía to finalize ideas and details, and to discuss the museum’s positioning and approach regarding Latin America.

The Museum of America in Madrid is hosting El sueño del jaguar (The Dream of the Jaguar), an exhibition curated by visual artist Fredi Casco (Asunción, Paraguay, 1967) and photographer Fernando Allen (Asunción, Paraguay, 1957), which brings together artistic, ethnographic, and scientific perspectives on the jaguar and its symbolic and ecological significance.

From June 19 to 28, Madrid’s Reina Sofía Museum will host Los reyes de la página roja (The Kings of the Red Page), a program dedicated to contemporary audiovisual productions from El Salvador. Part of the series Other Visions of Central America, this selection has been curated by Salvadoran artist Patricio Majano, this year’s resident at the Instituto Cáder de Arte Centroamericano—an initiative promoted by the Reina Sofía Museum Foundation and the museum itself to support research and dissemination of Central American art.

Terraphilia—a term combining terra (earth) with philia (love and friendship)—evokes a deep-rooted connection of affect, care, and responsibility toward the earth and its multitudes of inhabitants. In a time of planetary unmaking and gaping inequalities, the exhibition turns to art to orient us toward transformative ways of being—mobilizing interspecies kinship, new forms of collectivity, and practices of planetary love. 

The Andalusian Center of Contemporary Art (CAAC) presents Sensemayá. Cánticos para matar a la Culebra (Sensemaya. Chants to kill the snake), the first solo institutional exhibition in Spain by Claribel Calderius (Havana, Cuba, 1986). Conceived specifically for the San Bruno Chapel, the project is a site-specific intervention that draws on the space’s historical and spiritual resonance—qualities that align seamlessly with the symbolic universe of the Cuban artist.

The Elba Benítez Gallery in Madrid is currently hosting an exhibition of photographs from A Sônia, a project by Claudia Andujar (Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 1931), created in 1971. This body of work stands as one of the most significant early explorations into the creative manipulation of the photographic snapshot. For this occasion, the exhibition focuses on a carefully curated selection of images that establish a dialogue of balance, intensity, and chromatic richness with the surrounding space.

The videographic universe of Jonathas de Andrade (Maceió, Brazil, 1982) is only one part of his broader artistic practice. It is, of course, significant—complementing other worlds that shape the ideology and imaginary embedded in both the work and the persona of the Brazilian artist. For this reason, the selection of exclusively audiovisual works under the title Tiempo, sueño, olor (Time, Dream, Scent), on view at Madrid’s Centro de Cultura Contemporánea Condeduque, offers a concise, representative, and necessary approach that ultimately bears witness to a part for the whole.

Multidisciplinary artist Bárbara Sánchez-Kane (Mérida, Mexico, 1987) presents ¿Cuántos ángeles caben en la punta de un alfiler? (How Many Angels Fit on the Tip of a Pin?), her first solo show at Collegium—a center for the creation, research, and display of contemporary art, known for its residencies. With Sánchez-Kane’s project, Collegium inaugurates its new role as a museum. All the pieces, curated by José Esparza Chong Cuy, were created on site, and their placement within the Church of San Martín fosters a dialogue with the building’s symbolic and historical character.

Ría, Jorge Satorre’s (Mexico City, Mexico, 1979) first exhibition in Spain, can be approached as a compendium of the sublimation of his ideas and research into the conceptual and material limits of the different practices he has engaged in. The show, curated by Max Andrews and Uruguayan Mariana Cánepa Luna for the Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, is thus conceived as an immersive space in which those very boundaries are blurred in favor of a deeper observation of processes.

The Casa de México Foundation in Spain is hosting, through the second week of June, a must-see exhibition from the Jumex Collection—one of the most significant contemporary art collections in Latin America. Titled Éramos felices y no lo sabíamos (We Were Happy and Didn't Know It), the exhibition revisits the vibrant artistic scene of 1990s Mexico, offering a re-reading of one of the most dynamic periods in the country’s contemporary art history.

The Botin Center, in Santander, is hosting the exhibition Maruja Mallo: mascara y compás (Maruja Mallo: Mask and Compass), a show that vindicates, through a broad selection of works from her most relevant periods, the figure of Maruja Mallo (Vivero, Spain, 1902 – Madrid, Spain, 1995). This exhibition delves into the legacy of the artist, a body of work which, like her own persona, has recently been the subject of revisions and visibility efforts to better integrate her trajectory into art historiography.

The Palau Martorell in Barcelona is hosting Fernando Botero. Un maestro universal (Fernando Botero. A Universal Master), the most comprehensive exhibition of paintings by Fernando Botero (Medellín, Colombia, 1932 – Monte Carlo, Monaco, 2023) ever held in Spain. This exhibition offers a detailed exploration of the Colombian artist’s career, highlighting his mastery of various painting techniques and the scope of his artistic output.

Joana Vasconcelos (Paris, France, 1971) walks that fine aesthetic line between the overwhelming and the excessive. The artist does not hide her intentions—she never has—and if the ornate effect of her works is what she aims for, then the mission is accomplished. When faced with a production that is so clearly personal and deliberate, the setting can only serve to further amplify the challenge her installations pose to our ideas of beauty and artistic harmony.

Chile will be the guest country at this year’s PHotoESPAÑA. For the first time in its history, the international festival includes a dedicated national section, with four major figures in Chilean photography taking the spotlight. The event will feature major exhibitions of work by Lotty Rosenfeld, Julia Toro, Michael Mauney, and Martín Gusinde. These exhibitions—held across venues in Madrid and Santander—offer audiences a powerful encounter with a body of work deeply shaped by the country’s history and social fabric.

The RAC Foundation presents, at its headquarters in Pontevedra, Expedition Camellias: Herbal of Artificial Plants, a solo show by Alberto Baraya (Bogotá, Colombia, 1968), originating from the Artist-in-Residence program developed by the foundation. The exhibition features a group of twelve works resulting from a research project on the camellia—a flower native to China and Japan that has become an essential element in the landscapes, gardens, and parks of western Galicia.