Alba Matilla (Avilés, 1998) works at the intersection of painting, video, photogrammetry, 3D scanning, videogames, and installation. Her research focuses on the preservation of industrial memory and on new ways of making painting in a digital world.

Having grown up surrounded by everyday objects bearing the logo of her family’s steel industry, she understands Asturias’s industrial landscapes as identity-forming territories, imbued with magic and symbolism, and capable of generating their own mythology. As part of her research project developed during a residency at Factoría Cultural de Avilés and within the framework of the Biennial’s ACTS Residencies, Matilla presents three works at the Climate Biennial: Güercu, Borrina'l Güercu, and La Cabadera (2026). Each piece combines a painted canvas with a video projection and a soundscape infused with industrial resonances. The first two reactivate figures from Asturian mythology associated with the world of the dead: the mist that ensnares the traveller (here identified with factory smoke) and the creature that takes the form of the recently deceased. The third is the artist’s own invention: La Cabadera—a creature emerging from a toxic pond in a former slag heap in Tabaza. Conceived through Asturian mythology as a living practice and a way of thinking about the present, the work emerged after developing these ideas in workshops with schools as part of the Biennial’s Art + Education programme.