2026 Programme
ARTESANTANDER 2026 completes its offering with exhibitions and activities of its own production: ARTESANTANDER Artist - BALEARES Solo - ARTESANTANDER Editorial - ARTESANTANDER Talks - ARTESANTANDER Kids.
ARTESANTANDER Artist:
NICOLA COSTANTINO
Argentine artist Nicola Costantino (Rosario, 1964) is one of the most important international artists of her generation, recognized for her ability to address complex themes with an innovative and deeply personal artistic language. Her work has been exhibited in prestigious venues, including the Venice Biennale in 2013, where she represented Argentina, as well as in museums in Liverpool, Tel Aviv, and Zurich, among others.
Costantino participates in ARTESANTANDER with two works. The performance Tortas Costantinopla will take place during the fair’s opening on July 2 at 6:30 p.m. This is an edible art installation that will transform desserts into ephemeral canvases, where color and movement merge into a sensory experience shared by the artist and the public. Additionally, the Flower Kiosk installation showcases her works inspired by plant forms and created using ancient Japanese ceramic techniques such as nerikomi.
BALEARES Solo:
"When The Fruit Falls" by Adrián Martínez
“When The Fruit Falls” by Adrián Martínez has been selected as the winning project of the open call from the Institute of Balearic Studies (IEB) to host a solo project by a Balearic artist at the institution’s stand at the ARTESANTANDER 2026 contemporary art fair. The exhibition presents a series of tapestries made with wool from native Mallorcan sheep, dyed with natural pigments obtained from local plant species. This is a collaborative project with Llanatura, a circular wool factory dedicated to the recovery of this natural resource from extensive Mallorcan flocks. Thus, the works presented emerge from a process of dialogue with the resources and productive possibilities of the immediate environment.
The proposal invites reflection on the links between art, territory, and sociocultural context from a critical perspective, employing humor and irony. Through drawings that incorporate elements of the absurd, he explores the contradictions and difficulties inherent in the painting process and artistic practice.
Adrián Martínez (Ibiza, 1984) holds a degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of La Laguna (Tenerife).
He currently lives and works in Mallorca. His work unfolds through diverse materials and languages, understanding drawing as a tool for research and comprehension of his surroundings, motivated by the desire to narrate certain stories, reflect on the everyday, and question his own artistic practice. Thus, his work incorporates everything from graphite on walls to iron, wool, animation, and sound, exploring the expressive possibilities of each medium to generate different layers of meaning and depth in the work, with a particular interest in the landscape and natural resources, reflected in his use of materials such as wool.
Among his solo exhibitions, those held at Es Baluard, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Palma, stand out; The Ferran Cano Gallery (Barcelona and Palma); the Ateneo de La Laguna (Tenerife). She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions at institutions and centers such as the Casal Solleric (Palma); the La Regenta Art Center (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria); the MACE, Museum of Contemporary Art of Ibiza; the TEA, Tenerife Arts Space (Tenerife); the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid; Es Baluard; and the MUU Kaapeli (Helsinki).
The selection committee consisted of Mónica Álvarez Careaga, director of ARTESANTANDER; Joaquín García Martín, curator and member of the fair’s selection committee; and Karen Andrea Müller, technician in the visual arts department of the IEB.
The Balearic Institute of Studies (IEB) is a cultural institution of the Government of the Balearic Islands, which works to promote and internationalize Balearic artists through strategic events with international reach.
Image:
“Estructura 6”, 2025. Mallorcan sheep’s wool dyed with plants, 218 x 167 cm. Fragment.
ARTESANTANDER
Editorial
Al-Tiba9 Contemporary
Barcelona
Carmen Alonso Libros
Santander
Fontanar Ediciones
Riaza, Segovia
Nórdica Libros
Madrid
Oficina de Fotografía Anónima
Santander
Sirocomag
Madrid
ARTESANTANDER
Talks
6:00 p.m. Conversation: curator Victoria Rivers + artist Carmen Ceniga Prado (Gaby Vera Fine Arts)
Victoria Rivers (1984, Zaragoza) is an independent art curator, researcher, and writer currently based in the United States. She is dedicated to exploring the boundaries of contemporary creation and contributing to critical and transformative thinking. The international nature of her work allows her to configure her practice as a space of convergence, a dynamic ecosystem where the vital, the ancestral, and the contemporary intertwine like a constantly moving network of knowledge.
Carmen Ceniga Prado‘s (1995, Bilbao) practice explores her own body and its specters through abstraction, particularly the internal feelings and sensations that arise before the body and mind categorize them as emotional or physical. Painting becomes a tool for accessing the liminal space between emotions and physical sensations. Ceniga Prado studied Fine Arts at the Pratt Institute in New York in 2015 and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Wimbledon College of Arts in London in 2018. In 2023, she completed her MBA at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore.
6:45 p.m. Conversation: curator Óscar Manrique + artist Laura Segura (Marquesa Gallery)
Óscar Manrique (1994, León). Independent curator, critic, and art historian specializing in visual studies. Director of the curatorial space un lugar in Madrid and co-director of the +LATINA art festival. His research focuses on an anthropology of the image, examining the metamorphoses that images undergo in the contemporary world. He also works from an archaeology of the present, interested in the remnants, the everyday, and kitsch—that is, in everything that historiography has discarded and that today allows for new interpretations. He develops this practice from an ecology of images, permeated by visual, literary, cinematic, and musical references.
Laura Segura (1985, Pedrera, Seville) studied Fine Arts in Granada, where she currently resides. Her artistic research revolves around the concept of origin and the profound relationship with nature. Her pieces highlight the creative process as a living reality, where matter, time, and gesture construct meaning. Through smell, touch, and color, she seeks to evoke a primal connection between humankind and the earth. Segura often creates large-scale installations that transform the spaces where they are exhibited, through slow, meditative, and deeply artisanal processes.
6:00 p.m. Conversation: curator Alejandra Rodríguez Cunchillos + artist Paula Valdeón (Artizar Gallery)
Alejandra Rodríguez Cunchillos holds a PhD in Art History, specializing in contemporary art and private collecting. She has a distinguished academic and research career, and has taught Art History at the UNED (National University of Distance Education) and the UOC (Open University of Catalonia). She has undertaken research stays at SOAS University of London, Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, and the Complutense University of Madrid. As a curator, she has organized national and international exhibitions with institutions such as the Friends of the Reina Sofía Museum Foundation at ARCO, the IAACC Pablo Serrano, and the Pablo Gargallo Museum, among others, as well as with numerous art galleries. She has also written publications and is a member of the International Association of Art Critics.
Paula Valdeón was born in 1992 in Villafranca de los Barros, Badajoz. She studied Fine Arts in Salamanca and earned a Master’s degree in Art Research in Madrid, where she lives and works. Her work explores how we manage decoration in architecture. In her paintings and ceramics, Valdeón reinterprets decorative and artistic patterns she finds in the street, transforming them into more intimate and personal ones. Disregarding the patterns’ origins, she uses them as her own material, playing with them until the image returns to the organic, employing her own hands as brushes, while clay and oil become tools for generating questions.
11:45 a.m. Conversation: Curator Isabella Lenzi + Artist Álvaro Borobio (Proyecto H)
Isabella Lenzi (1986, São Paulo, Brazil) is an architect, urban planner, and museologist. She is the Visual Arts Curator at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid and the Artistic Director and Chief Curator of the Alberto Cruz Foundation in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic). Previously, she was a curator and researcher of Latin American art at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and a curator of visual arts at the MAPFRE Foundation. For seven years, she directed the cultural center of the Instituto Camões in São Paulo and worked in the curatorial department of the Whitechapel Gallery in London. As an independent curator, she has collaborated with the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco and the PAC – Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Milan, and has curated projects at numerous Spanish institutions.
Álvaro Borobio (1984, Guadalajara) Borobio’s work explores the dualism between the human and natural realms, which the artist manipulates to create new realities where nature and urban architecture are conceived as a single entity. The artist emphasizes this polarity by interweaving disparate representations and visual languages. Through his unique expressiveness, Borobio manifests his concern regarding the relationship between metropolitan society and the natural environment, and the active role that human beings play in the encounter between the two.