Gonzalo Mon Valdés
1 February 2024 – 31 July 2024
Gonzalo Mon Valdés graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Salamanca (2022) and holds a Master’s degree in Artistic Production from the Universitat Politècnica de València (2023). He holds the monographic exhibition ‘El nombre de todos sus ahogados’ in the Sala Borrón of the Principality of Asturias in May 2023. First prize in sculpture in the XXII Certamen de Jóvenes Creadores del Ayuntamiento de Salamanca and collaborates in 2022 with the Social Affairs Service of the University of Salamanca, exhibiting in the Escuelas Menores of the University. He received two Honourable Mentions in the XXV Edition of the San Marcos Awards 2022, exhibiting at the Palacio de la Salina and at the Domus Artium 2002 (DA2).
Gonzalo Mon investigates from a queer perspective on concepts such as historical memory, appropriationism and the resignification of hegemonic languages as a tool of resistance. These dissident memories range from the real to the fictionalised, creating collectivising narratives.
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.
