For the thirteenth consecutive year, Gaiás becomes a meeting place where emerging creators have the opportunity to present their work and discuss contemporary art during four days of coexistence and exchange of knowledge and ideas with other cultural agents. The 13th New Artists Meeting #EAN13, will be held from 27 to 31 August 2023, coordinated once again by Rafael Doctor.

The New Artists Meeting seeks to promote the coexistence between emerging artists from Galicia and from other places, as well as allowing them to come into contact with creators of recognised trajectory, and with agents of the sector in fields such as criticism and curatorship, who participate in the meeting as art followers. As every year, the EAN brings to Gaiás prominent names of the current contemporary art scene, focusing specifically in this edition on photography and audiovisual arts with artists such as Alberto García-Alix, Beatriz Ruibal, Estela de Castro and Vari Caramés, who will share their experiences and reflections on art and the process of creation with emerging artists.

Showcase of emerging creation

EAN13 selects 40 emerging artists who, during the meeting, make a public presentation focused on their personal creative work, thus serving as a platform and showcase for their creations. They also have the opportunity to carry out an artistic intervention proposal in the Hejduk Towers of the Cidade da Cultura, converted into a non-conventional exhibition space. Those interested in participating must send the documentation required in the rules of participation to the email encontro@ cidadedacultura.org before 14:00h on 26 May 2023. The documentation, as well as any queries about the procedure, should also be sent to the same email address. Do not forget to read the rules of participation carefully.

Artists

Alberto García-Alix | León, 1956 Photographer, audiovisual creator, writer and editor, his first exhibitions took place in the 1980s. Throughout his career he has had exhibitions, among others, at the Reina Sofía, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Museum House of Photography in Moscow and the Prado Museum. He was awarded the National Photography Prize (1999), the PHotoEspaña Prize (2012) and the Gold Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts of Spain in 2019. In his latest exhibition, Fantasías en el Prado (Fantasies at El Prado), he reinterprets some of the paintings in the Prado Museum using the technique of multiple photographic exposure on analogue film.
Estela de Castro | Madrid, 1978 Photographer specialising in portraits, she trained with artists such as Eduardo Momeñe and the Vallhonrat brothers. Part of her work is linked to the struggle for human and animal rights. In 2020 she produced the work Resilience, which be part of a collective project in book format co-published by La Fábrica and Fundación ENAIRE and exhibited at PhotoEspaña. In 2020 she took the official portraits of the royal family and in 2021 the documentary series Detrás del Instante on La2 dedicated an episode to her career. She teaches and has published in media such as El País Semanal, El Mundo, La Vanguardia and The Times.
Vari Caramés | Ferrol, 1953 Born in Ferrol, he moved to live in La Coruña at the age of nine. A self-taught photographer, at 15 his father, an amateur artist, gave him a Voigtlander hand-held camera to photograph his paintings, drawings and wrought iron pieces. He says that he never intended to make a living from photography and now he cannot live without it. He is interested in making the everyday seem extraordinary, extracting effects from defects, and avoiding fashions and trends. He declares himself a lover of the timeless and the indefinite and more intuitive than intellectual, opting for chance over certainty.
Beatriz Ruibal | Pontevedra, 1969 All of Beatriz Ruibal's work - photographic or cinematographic - is marked by the portrait genre in the broadest of its meanings: portraits of others, or of herself, through the objects we choose to remember ourselves in which references to memory, nostalgia or traces are a constant. Her work has been exhibited, among others, at Matadero Madrid, PhotoEspaña Royal Botanic Garden, Casa Encendida, Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid, CCEMiami, Casa de las Américas in Havana, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Ars Aevi (Sarajevo). She is founder and editor of Varasek Ediciones.

The curators, cultural managers and critics Nerea Ubieto and Sara Donoso; the artist and curator Eduardo Díaz Valiña; the journalist and curator Javier Díaz-Guardiola and the journalist and cultural manager Martín Moniche will participate in the meeting as observers or art followers, sharing with the participants their experience in supporting new talents from the curatorial or communication fields.

How to participate

The 13th New Artists Meeting, EAN13 has a total of 40 places available for professionals born between 1988 and 2005 —both included—, whether they are students and/or graduates in Fine Arts or related disciplines or demonstrate an artistic trajectory or project. Ten of the 40 places available are open to artists over the age of 35, who must meet the same requirements as the other candidates. A place at the EAN13 includes tuition, full board stay and daily transport from the place of stay to the City of Culture.