Avelino Sala

AVELINO SALA (Gijón, 1972).
"Mirror Stage" 2018.
Inkjet printing with uvi inks on duck feathers.
The series "Mirror Stage" was exhibited at Bienal Sur, Museo Nacional de Colombia, Bogota, September 2019.
Measurements: 50 x 40 cm.

The title "Mirror Stage" of the series to which this work belongs alludes to the Lacanian conception of the "I" that recognizes itself in the mirror. On two feathers (that material that symbolizes the poetic, the loss, the fragility, but also the fall, the memory and an idea of that which can be "carried away by the wind" that is: the infraleve) appear confronted images: real images of women and girls drowned in the Mediterranean confronted with pictorial, romantic images of the myth of Ophelia in art or other iconic works on the force of the ocean, as "The great wave of Kanagawa" that we observe in the work that we bid.

Avelino Sala lives and works in Barcelona. He has worked in different disciplines, including drawing, sculpture, photography and video. A socially committed creator, his interventions in the public space are intended to make the viewer reflect on the moment in which he lives. His work focuses on the critical reflection of the cultural reality of his time. Sala works in the global context of contemporary art, exhibiting and participating in biennials in Caracas, Tel Aviv, Istanbul, among others. His production has been exhibited nationally and internationally in spaces such as the Abrons Arts Center in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts of Asturias, the MAAC in Guayaquil, the National Center of Contemporary Art in Moscow and Matadero in Madrid, among others. He has received several grants, including Cajastur, Hangar, Bilbao Arte and the Premio Generaciones de CajaMadrid. In 2007 he was awarded by UNESCO and the New York Foundation for the Arts with the Artport International Video Award in Basel (Switzerland) and in 2010 with the VAD Award, Festival de Videoarte de Girona. He also received a grant from the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome and from Le Lait Art Center in Albi, France, in 2012.
His work has been presented in various exhibitions, national and international, highlighting among the most recent: (2013 S.O..S) Es Baluard, Palma de Mallorca, (An Essay on culture 2013), NCCA, Moscow, (Distopia:right now) 2012 Carrara Marble Museum, (Funeral Pyre 2012) Matadero, Madrid, (Cacotopia 2011), First Screen, La Pedrera (AUTRUI 2011) Centre Dart Le Lait Grahulet, France, (Block House 2011)(, Raquel Ponce Gallery, ARTIUM (stop! 2010), Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, (Fatherland or Death! 2010), Virgil de Voldere Gallery, New York, (hostile 2009), Sofia National Museum of Art (International Reencounters, 2009), Queen X Havana Biennial, (Comunicacionismos, 2009), A Foundation, London (Off the Street, 2009), Insert Coin, Spanish Young Art, October Contemporary, Hong Kong 2009) or Tina B Biennale Prague, (Small Revolutions 2008) or The Promised Land (Chelsea Art Museum, 2008). CajaMadrid Generation Award 2003. Sponsored, among others, by Hangar and Bilbao Arte. In 2010 he was a fellow of the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome and the art center Le Lait in Albi, France. In 2022 he participated in the Cuenca Biennial in Ecuador (2021), the South Biennial in Colombia (2021), the Dakar Biennial in Senegal (2022), the Lanzarote Biennial (2023) and a solo exhibition in the Spanish pavilion of the Malta Biennial (2024).