Avelino Sala | The Tempest

Description

Avelino Sala
The Tempest

“The Tempest” proposes a journey through the work of the artist Avelino Sala as an exercise in critical and poetic resistance. The exhibition unfolds like a field of tensions: between threats and fragility, between inherited symbols and new imaginaries, between the gestures of power and the cracks through which other narratives slip in. The various works that make up the exhibition address current issues without losing sight of a precise and considered aesthetic specificity.

In series such as “The Library of Babel”, books become artefacts of memory and struggle, giving material form to slogans and movements that inhabit the margins of official history. Words also break into the space through neon—slogans that directly address our contemporary world—and in the sculptural gestures of the Washings: globes submerged in colours that allude to the symbolic “washings” of global capitalism.

These pieces highlight the contradictions of a system that turns the climate emergency, gender equality, or social rights into mere advertising. Concepts such as control, frontier, and memory intersect in pieces that function as a living archive of collective conflicts and desires.

“The Tempest” is not presented merely as an exhibition, however, but as a parallel visual narrative, a poetic and political map which, through disarmed symbols and retrieved narratives, invites us to imagine other forms of resistance. It is here, at the crossroads of critique and beauty, that we can more closely appreciate the discursive and aesthetic power of Sala’s work.

Avelino Sala (Gijón, 1972) is an artist and editor of the magazine Sublime. His work as an artist has led him to question cultural and social reality from a poetic perspective that has a distinctly critical tone. Through continual exploration of social imagery, Sala attempts to highlight painful issues, demonstrating art’s power as a forum for experimentation and for the creation of new worlds. Sala is one of Spain’s leading figures in the use of art as a vehicle for resistance. In his work there is a sort of poetry which reflects on the powers of the state and the control they exercise. His recognisable aesthetic strengthens a discourse as necessary as it is powerful, touching on sensitive and relevant themes such as migration, contemporary dislocation, the environmental crisis and the paradoxes of capitalism.

Sala works in the global contemporary art arena, exhibiting at and taking part in biennials in Caracas, Tel Aviv, Istanbul and other cities. His work has been shown internationally in venues such as New York’s Abrons Arts Center, the Fine Arts Museum of Asturias, the MAAC in Guayaquil, Moscow’s National Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) and Matadero Madrid, among others.

He has received several grants, most notably those from Cajastur, Hangar and Bilbao Arte, as well as Caja Madrid’s Generaciones Award. In 2007, he was awarded the Artport International Video Award in Basel, Switzerland by UNESCO and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and in 2010 he won the VAD Prize at the Girona Video and Digital Arts Festival. He was also a fellow at Rome’s Royal Academy of Spain and, in 2012, at Le Lait Art Centre in Albi, France. In 2024, he represented Spain in its national pavilion at the Malta Biennale. His work is currently on display at the Europalia Biennial at the SMAK Centre for Contemporary Art in Ghent, Belgium, and at the MEIAC Contemporary Art Centre in Badajoz, Spain.

Semíramis González (Gijón, 1988) has a degree in Art History from the University of Oviedo and a Master's degree from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) in Contemporary Art History and Visual Culture in the Reina Sofía Museum. She is currently completing a PhD in Art History at the University of Oviedo. Since July 2025, she has been the director of LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre in Gijón.

She has curated projects such as "Revelations" by the artist Marina Vargas at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, "Against the Skin" at TEA (Tenerife), "Wrong Is Not My Name: Art Against Gender Violence" at LABoral Art Centre (Gijón), "The Tree of Rage" at the EACC in Castellón and "Letters to the Editor" by Cristina de Middel at Sala Canal Isabel II in Madrid. She is the curator of "Vision and Presence", a series of performance art by female artists at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. From 2018 to 2022, she directed the JUSTMAD (Madrid) and JUSTLX (Lisbon) art fairs, and she has worked with museums and institutions such as Es Baluard Museum (Palma de Mallorca), the PHotoEspaña Festival, the Atlantic Centre for Modern Art – CAAM (Gran Canaria) and the Art Centre of La Panera (Lleida), among many others.

She has won various awards, including the Aequalitas Award for Effective Equality Between Women and Men (2021) and the Best Partner Award from the Blanco, Negro y Magenta Association (2024). She has taught classes for the PHotoESPAÑA Master’s programme in Photographic Projects, the Master's degree in Art Business at CEU San Pablo University and the Master's in Cultural Management at La Fábrica. She has also written for various publications, including ArtNexus and INES, Intersectional Expanded System.