Meaning Making: Fragmented Imaginary of Twelve Cantabrian Artists Opening Reception

Meaning Making. Fragmented Imaginary of Twelve Cantabrian Artists

Organized by the Government of Cantabria and SPAIN arts & culture.

Curated by Mónica Álvarez Careaga

Visiting hours: Monday-Thursday, from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm, and Friday, from 9:30 am to 2:30 pm.

• This exhibition brings together important creators from Cantabria (Spain) to showcase their work and highlight the region’s art history and cultural roots.
• The Department ofEducation, Culture and Sport of the Government of Cantabria (Spain) is putting new internationalisation initiatives into action in order to increase awareness of the creative potential of the region through a coherent series of promotion and publicity activities in the United States and Europe.
• The program includes this exhibition of contemporary art curated by Mónica Álvarez Careaga —Meaning Making. Fragmented imagery from twelve artists from Cantabria— which bring together important artists characterized by an expressive narrative that incorporate references to the history of art and their own experiences, as well as reinterpretations and assemblies of diverse images.
• The exhibition opens on Thursday, April 11 at 6:30 PM at the Embassy of Spain in Washington and will run until May 8.

• Artists include Víctor Alba, Luis Bezeta, Alfonso Borragán, Cristina del Campo, Antonio Díaz Grande, Álvaro González, Raúl Hevia, Javier Lamela, Gorka Mohamed, Cuca Nelles, Gloria Pereda and Álvaro Trugeda.

If we take contemporary art as a way of exploring the infinite complexity of the world and a way of understanding and communicating it, we can interpret the work of the twelve artists from the Spanish region of Cantabria featured at this exhibition as a mapping of new imagery, new awareness and world views.

What Víctor Alba, Luis Bezeta, Alfonso Borragán, Cristina del Campo, Antonio Díaz Grande, Álvaro González, Raúl Hevia, Javier Lamela, Gorka Mohamed, Cuca Nelles, Gloria Pereda and Álvaro Trugeda have in common is that they divide up their works by including various materials: references to history of the arts, documents related to their experience of life or reinterpretations and assemblies of images from a variety of backgrounds.

They are creators who operate with a mechanism for integrating fragments in broader contexts of significance. These fragments (drawings, photos, texts or films) accumulate, overlap, and even contradict each other by reflecting the diversity and the richness of the experience of life. They are, in short, constructors of meanings, private and individual most of the time.

This set of images and narratives constitutes, in the end, a fragmented and heterogeneous fresco of the concerns and interests of a generation of active Cantabrian artists at the beginning of their creative maturity. They do not share any common theoretical program, but with their works they advocate the autonomy of art and prepare ironic messages which are distanced from subjects which include a commentary and anything biographical.