Raul Martínez Mendo |
Rome (EFE).- The Academy of Spain in Rome will open today the doors of its historic workshops to show the public the ins and outs and the evolution of the creative processes carried out by the current residents of an institution where painters, writers, artists conceptual and architects.
The “Open Studios” session allows visitors to enter work spaces where they can see everything from audiovisual creations generated by artificial intelligence to reproductions of beauty ointments used in Ancient Greece.
“We will receive people who do not know us, which gives us the opportunity to explain our work and generate new conversations with people who are not directly involved in the projects,” sculptor Pablo Arenillas told EFE.
But not only the general public will pass through the rooms of the institution: the residents of the Academy will also receive professionals from the artistic and cultural sector from Spain and Italy in their studios to present their projects and “generate new creative synergies”.
With the exhibition of the intimacies of the artistic process, the residents face for the first time since their arrival in Rome a professional opinion on works still in development and that will be presented in a great final exhibition on June 27, when the scholarship holders finish their stay at the Academy.
“Having feedback from people beyond the study helps us to know how to deal with the remainder of the scholarship”, acknowledges the artistic designer Raquel Buj, from the “Unguens” project.
Experimentation with natural materials
Buj’s work, which occupies one of the first studios that visitors will find on their way through the corridors of the Academy, reflects the result of experimentation with the different natural materials with which the classical writer Ovid narrated the cosmetic practices of women and men of millennia ago.
“In this project, a connection is established between the present and a past in which I have entered as if I were an ancient Roman, preparing old beauty recipes and investigating what happened when making them”, details the artist.
In the midst of the chaos prior to the open doors, the “Unguens” studio exhibits fermented lentils, rose petals, mineral salts, beeswax and dozens of other ingredients used in archaic cosmetics from a contemporary perspective.
“I’ve applied some and I still have skin, so they shouldn’t be too bad,” Buj jokes.
In a Spanish Academy that is in full celebration of its first 150 years of life, past realities are intermingled with present and future ones through works that also show the truth from the fabrication of a lie.
“I work with different artificial intelligence programs to generate historical photos that could be real, but did not come to exist, which serves as a tool to explore other artistic paths and bring elements of artificial images to the physical world,” the director told EFE. audiovisual creator Abel Jaramillo from Badajoz.
Those who immerse themselves in Jaramillo’s studio find the non-existent photographs of the fire in the old Badajoz prison caused during a riot in 1978 which, under the flames, is intertwined in an audiovisual and pictorial history with the fire that burned a good part of the studios. cinema at Cinecittà, in Rome, last August.
Because if the majority of projects that are born within the walls of the Academy of Spain have something in common, it is the impact generated by the artists’ stay in the Italian capital, where they thrive on coexistence with multiple creative disciplines and the beauty of a city where you walk through thousands of years of art history.
“You come here with a project and an idea that is in crisis and is being modified by Rome and contact with other artists. Everything that this city and the Academy gives makes our projects vary and takes us to places we had not thought of. This mixture is the marvel of our scholarships”, sums up the painter Manu Muniategiandikoetxea to EFE.