Gonzalo Mon Valdés
1 February 2024 – 31 July 2024
Gonzalo Mon Valdés (Uviéu, 2000), holds an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from the University of Salamanca (2022) and a Master’s degree in Artistic Production from the Universitat Politécnica de València (2023).
He is a participant in the ANIAV E±acto Congress with his communication “Amigas viejas de las que no sé nada” in July 2024, with his research project carried out in the 2024 Artistic Residency at LABoral Centro de Arte de Xixón.
He carries out is monographic exhibition “El nombre de todos sus ahogados” at the Sala Borrón del Principáu d’Asturies in 2023, and participates in group exhibitions in institutions such as the Da2 of Salamanca, the Escuelas Mayores of the University of Salamanca, El Palacio de la Salina and others. He was awarded first prize in Sculpture in the Certamen de Jóvenes Artistas de Salamanca 2022, with two Honorable Mentions in the Premio San Marcos 2022.
Gonzalo Mon investigates critical fabulation, generating memory networks from a queer prism. Thus creating counter-archival resistances that enunciate dissident narratives between the real and the fictional, the past and the present, claiming ambiguity as a defense and configuring community memory networks.
Artist participating in the exhibition Terranautas. Notes for a new world map
Project in residence
Amigas viejas de las que no sé nada
The project ‘Amigas viejas de las que no sé nada’ is a multidisciplinary artistic research composing through a queer gaze the work with found and manipulated objects.
Amigas viejas de las que no sé nada is the framework of a multidisciplinary artistic research that links the real and the fictional, trying to compose, through a queer gaze, a rhizome of memories of others and of oneself that are triggered by found and manipulated objects.
Taking as references the works of Sophie Calle, Jo Spence and Félix González-Torres, a network of meanings is generated based on the concept of Index, analysing the object from its journey, its real and imaginary trace, tracing emotional connections between past and present violence.
From the claim of historical memory, narratives are created that dialogue from the dissident and the silenced, placing the written voice at the centre as a resistance from language, as a vindication of the stolen voice, a concept that Pedro Lemebel deals with in his chronicles.
A series of connections is created in which we dialogue, in an obsessive process of repetition, with those whose names are written and of whom only their names are known. From being named, called, recognised and remembered, dissident memories are reclaimed, of those who are not named or whose names we cannot access. It also aims to propose ways of connection between the past and an imaginable future with a communitarian vision that recollectivises society.
Project selected in the 1st Call for Artistic Residencies 2024.
