The first participants of the Climate Biennale are announced

Climate Biennial: Art, Industry, and Territory will feature over 40 national and international participating artists, along with creators linked to the local context and research processes. Among the first confirmed artists are those whose works make up the National Art and Climate Collection: Abelardo Gil-Fournier, Irene Grau, Asunción Molinos Gordo, Sonia Navarro, Laura Palau, Belén Rodríguez and Jorge Yeregui. Artists who are part of the ACTS -Art, Science, Technology and Society- residency programmes of the Climate Biennial will also participate, such as Marion Balac, Enar de Dios Rodríguez, Natalia Domínguez, Elena Lavellés, Andrea Molina, Víctor Mazón, Nadia Penella, Rotor Studio and Mario Santamaría.

Beyond being an exhibition event, the Climate Biennial features meetings, concerts, workshops, performative actions and conversation spaces, positioning culture as a fundamental tool to imagine shared futures.

ACQUISITIONS FOR THE NATIONAL ART AND CLIMATE COLLECTION

Abelardo Gil-Fournier

Hacendera · 2023

Hacendera is an installation formed by a set of clay pots that rotate constantly, activating a continuous process of material and sound transformation. Friction and collision between the pieces generate a persistent acoustic landscape, while the mud itself slowly erodes and leaves traces of clay in the space. Inspired by the hacenderas (traditional forms of communal work), the work proposes a reflection on collective effort, shared time and the slow processes of wear and sedimentation both across matter and communities. 

Irene Grau

About to Do Nothing · 2019-2021

About to Do Nothing is the result of three years of research on the extractive processes and the rewilding of open skies in the mining basins of León and Asturias. The work links geological and human timelines, from the Stephanian Carboniferous period to the contemporary transformation of these materials into smoke and waste. Through a powerful monochrome, the artist summons a multiple darkness: that of the underground, that of mining work and that of an era with climate crises throughout.

The project also takes on a technical challenge, elaborating the canvases from collected raw materials, transferring their texture and sensory charge onto the painting.

Asunción Molinos Gordo

Mongrel · 2024

Mongrel is a textile installation made with almost a ton of wool collected in the Iberian Peninsula, resulting from research on sheep breeds, livestock production and rural economies.

The work questions the discourses of innovation and progress associated with standardisation, valuing vernacular knowledge and marginalised productive systems. Wool, in constant transformation, becomes a metaphor of hybrid identities, local resistances and non-hegemonic forms of knowledge.

Sonia Navarro

Untitled [Esparto] · 2024

Sonia Navarro works with esparto grass, a traditional vegetable fibre from the Iberian southeast, as a symbolic and ecological material. The work connects craft knowledge, female genealogies, and sustainable practices linked to her place of origin, Puerto Lumbreras. Beyond its cultural value, esparto grass fulfils an essential ecological function in the protection of the soil against erosion. Navarro claims this knowledge as forms of resistance against the hegemonic discourses of progress and development.

Laura Palau

Xylem Flexion · 2025

In Xylem Flexion, Laura Palau recovers affective and material links with the rural environment through local trees and the stories that surround them. The artist photographs dried specimens before they are cut down and frames each image with the wood of the tree itself, building objects that refer to the people who took care of them. The work evokes knowledge passed on, manual gestures and non-instrumental relationships with nature, proposing an intimate resistance against uprooting and contemporary homogenisation.

Belén Rodríguez

I danced myself out of the womb · 2023

This work consists of a large curtain dyed with natural pigments obtained from trees and plants from a forest protected by the artist in Cantabria.

Using the shibori technique, the fabric adopts shapes that evoke foliage, feathers and bodies in transformation. The piece proposes the forest as a space for care, protection and multi-species belonging, and reflects on the intimate relationship between body, territory and manual gesture.

Jorge Yeregui

The writing on the stones · 2024

This project addresses the energy paradigm shift and the transition from a model based on fossil fuels to one based on renewable energies, taking into account its effects on the territory. The work is set in the Gran Corta in Fabero, a mining enclave included in the Fair Transition Agreements, and it connects the closing down of coal mining with environmental restoration processes and geological time. Through images, texts and archive, the project proposes a critical reading on the landscape as a surface where layers of history, exploitation, and transformation are inscribed.

ACTS METEO RESIDENCIES

Marion Balac

pov · 2025 – 2026

This project explores forms of non-human cooperation and communication through a central question: how is meteorology understood from a non-human perspective? Marion Balac develops a series of videos inspired by the languages of social media, in which plants and other natural agents take on roles typical of contemporary digital culture, as if they were influencers. The work proposes a reinterpretation of online systems of socialization, particularly social media, shifting attention toward forms of vegetal and ecological knowledge that challenge the dominant anthropocentrism in the observation of climate.

Enar de Dios

Above All · 2025 – 2026

Above All critically addresses the economic, scientific, technological and socio-political framework that shapes the sky and the contemporary atmosphere. The work understands the sky not only as an exploited and regulated space, but also as an expressive subject pierced by conflicts, resistances and forms of collective resilience. Through a poetic and political approach, the project questions the systems that determine the occupation, exploitation and pollution of airspace, proposing an opposing view that trusts in the transformative power of shared doing and collectivity.

Natalia Dominguez

[Title to be confirmed] · 2025 – 2026

The project relates two historical and symbolic uses of water steam to reflect on models of relationships with the territory. On the one hand, it recovers the myth of the Garoé, the tree capable of capturing the humidity of the clouds on the island of El Hierro, and the traditional «cloud-catcher» technologies developed in arid territories. On the other hand, it connects this careful use of water with the invention of the steam engine and the beginning of a period of industrial extractivism based on intensive exploitation of natural resources.

The work imagines alternative narratives where water steam is not an instrument of domination, but of coexistence with the environment.

Victor Mazón

Fossils in Motion · 2025 – 2026

Fossils in Motion investigates how atmospheric phenomena such as wind and air pressure leave invisible traces on the landscape. The work focuses on what the artist calls “sound fossils”: vibrations, infrasound and flows that, although imperceptible, shape the earth and technological devices. Through organic and inorganic materials in motion, the project explores sound ecologies in territories where raw materials and energy are extracted, revealing the relationship between atmosphere, technology and landscape.

Nadia Penella

Climate Sentinels · 2025 – 2026

Climate Sentinels is an audiovisual project developed within the framework of the ACTS art residencies in collaboration with the National Meteorology Agency (AEMET). The work adopts a documentary and observational approach to put a face and voice to those who work daily in the production, interpretation and transmission of meteorological data. Through the monitoring of different departments, spaces, and atmospheric phenomena, the piece translates the technical language of climate into a sensitive and accessible plane, highlighting the cultural, social and human dimension of meteorology in a context of climate emergency.

Rotor Studio

[Title to be confirmed] · 2025 – 2026

This project consists of a mobile experimental weather station that translates atmospheric and air quality data into an artistic and plastic language. The project seeks to reduce the abstraction of the scientific information generated by the AEMET, turning it into an accessible visual and sensory experience. Through open and experimental processes, the installation invites us to rethink how climate data are perceived, interpreted and shared, opening new creative and educational possibilities.

ACTS FAIR TRANSITIONS RESIDENCIES

Elena Lavellés

The Breath of air · 2025 – 2026

The Breath of Air is an installation developed within the framework of the ACTS Fair Transitions residency at CIUDEN. The work deals with the production process of green hydrogen from a poetic and sensory approach, linking energy infrastructures, post-industrial territories and eco-social futures. Through video and sculpture, the project questions the dominant technological collective stereotypes, and proposes a critical reflection on the forms of energy transition and its impact on the territories.

Elena Lavellés

The Breath of air · 2025 – 2026

The Breath of Air is an installation developed within the framework of the ACTS Fair Transitions residency at CIUDEN. The work deals with the production process of green hydrogen from a poetic and sensory approach, linking energy infrastructures, post-industrial territories and eco-social futures. Through video and sculpture, the project questions the dominant technological collective stereotypes, and proposes a critical reflection on the forms of energy transition and its impact on the territories.

Andrea Molina

Geo-fantasies · 2025 – 2026

Geo-fantasies researches the visual and discursive imaginaries around green hydrogen and the energy transition. The project analyses how the industry produces images of the future based on promises of progress and sustainability, and raises the need to open these collective stereotypes to citizen participation. Through videos, cartographies and drawings, the work questions who imagines the future of energy and where from, proposing alternative narratives that are more critical, inclusive and located.

Mario Santamaría

[Title to be confirmed] · 2025 – 2026

This project investigates the gas distribution infrastructures based on a journey that connects the artist’s domestic space with a planetary energy transport network. The route takes the shape of the infrastructure itself as a research method, paying attention to the overlap between body, territory, and infrastructure. Concepts such as pressure, particle behaviour or temperature in storage and transport procedures formally articulate the resulting materials. The work proposes a critical reflection on the invisible networks that sustain contemporary life and their political and environmental implications.