LALIRIO by Fuentesal Arenillas, curated by Claudia Elies, is an exhibition structured around a collection of textiles, arranged between pillars and windows, like a great backbone. The work these artists create has gradually been filtered over the years, shaping ways of understanding the practice of sculpture as a collective learning process, adapted to a constant loss of form.

The exhibition is divided into two levels: on the ground floor is Carrusel and on the first floor are Imaginaria and Caracolas. There is an elasticity to the three installations that returns time and again to this small theatre of dérives, where necklines and waists, cuffs and hems intersect, each maintaining the movement of the one beside them, resting their hands above the materials that have continually led them to the action and occurrence. This construction doesn’t always have a clear story, but narratives and accounts that intertwine, intersect and repeat themselves, while the forms stretch, rest and disappear.

Carrusel is the correspondence between Fuentesal Arenillas and the artist Itziar Okariz; an epistolary relationship between Cadiz, Madrid and New York that materialises in a multitude of garment-letters. The pieces respond to the desire to bring their artistic practices closer, seeking new structures through them, to find other ways of talking to each other through what is physical. Itziar Okariz has explored different ways of putting these materials into action, while also producing a video archive of all the exercises performed alone or in the company of her daughter Izar or her students. The conversations between the artists are exercises in closeness, to draw nearer, to find common ground, but also in friendship, a seed brought by a bird, a waltz on the estuary, an accumulation of gestures or a change of perspective to do a headstand in a skirt. A wardrobe for everyone who explores in—and through—new structures in which common interests appear and give shape to the installation.

Imaginaria is based on the accumulation of traces that are repeated and piled up to generate a new arrangement of materials. Fuentesal Arenillas store, cut out and transport all the memories of years shared, which remain adhered to the tablex boards that were once the floors of their workshops, producing an archive of unchecked forms. A palimpsest that nature has intervened in without control, with a path towards new readings acquired from more than seventy frames that give shape to the work. Each one documents specific ways in which those who were there were present and acted. On this occasion, the artist LUCE has been invited by Fuentesal Arenillas to incorporate a new perspective and reading that helps expand these layers of memory. The process conveys, unites and tells of other forms of intimacy that turn everyday life into a shared stage.

Based on the same patterns and cuts as the garment-letters that make up Carrusel, a series of new variations is created: Caracolas. Produced deliberately for the LALIRIO exhibition, the artists reveal a dynamic of multiple transformations and imbalances, in which there is no final position. Articulated in the space, they are in a state of rest, accompanying each other with different loads and tensions. These pieces suggest other forms of respite, other gaps and other ways of perceiving new movements. These gestures refer both to the words and to the volumes that are achieved with use and which, over time, facilitate the posture, the elongation or the character, entering and exiting their cover, sliding through the fullness and emptiness of the surface that falls under its own weight.

The exhibition unfolds in the same way as the flowers of a sea daffodil, which emerge each day and accumulate alongside others, creating a new order. The pieces on display are capable of changing without losing their original form, of becoming something else without ceasing to be what they are.


Fuentesal Arenillas (Huelva, 1986 – Cádiz, 1989) explore connections and states as a starting point, working based on the dual figure, the transformation of their own praxis and the practice of sculpture after the game from which it originates, taking shape through the metaphorical possibilities of the materials. Their allegorical and linguistic implications are embedded—installed—in other circuits of material and cultural production—popular production. Among their most recent solo exhibitions are Carrusel at Condeduque (Madrid); La danza mudanza at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (Seville); Cubierta brillante Margen delgado at the Sala de Arte Joven (Madrid); Casapuerta at the Luis Adelantado gallery (Valencia); and Un collar de ventanas at the Centro Párraga (Murcia). Recently, they have exhibited collectively at CHÃO, Centro Internacional das Artes José de Guimarães (Portugal); Lo que pesa una cabeza at TEA (Tenerife); Processi 150 at the Real Academia de España in Rome; Una historia reciente II at the Fundación Juan March (Palma); La vista y el tacto [ca. 1929-30] at the Centro Federico García Lorca (Granada); Dialectos at CA2M Madrid; and Turno de Réplica at the Museo Patio Herreriano (Valladolid). They have received different awards, grants and residencies, notably Production 2024 from the ”La Caixa” Foundation; the ARCO Community of Madrid Award 2024; the 2022-2023 award from the Real Academia de España in Rome; Generaciones 2023 from La Casa Encendida; a residency at the María José Jove Foundation; the 6th Emerging Art Awards by Cervezas Alhambra at ARCOmadrid; the 25th Edition of VEGAP; and Matadero Crea, among others.