La Bienal Climática de Avilés is a contemporary art project that explores the relationship between artistic creation and the climate emergency. Through exhibitions, interventions, and initiatives developed in different spaces across the city, the biennial brings together artists whose practices reflect on transformations of the territory, ecosystems, natural resources, and ways of inhabiting the planet, proposing art as a space from which to imagine new perspectives in response to today’s environmental challenges.
Among the participating artists are Belén Rodríguez and irene grau.
irene grau (Valencia, 1986)
As regards A punto de ser nada [About to be Nothing], an installation comprising thirteen paintings and nine photographs, it comes from a three-year research project in the mining regions of León and Asturias, including visits to open-cast mines, tunnels and sites such as La Casa del Humo [The House of Smoke] in Lois. The canvases, created using Cerredo coal, Fabero anthracite, spoil heap material and carbonised smoke, bridge different eras: from the Stephanian Carboniferous period to contemporary combustion, by which that very same material is transformed into smoke. Through monochrome, the artist brings to light a multifaceted darkness: that of the subsoil, that of extractive work, and that of an era marked by overlapping climate crises.
Belén Rodríguez (Valladolid, 1981)
In I Danced Myself Out of the Womb (2023), the artist uses materials collected in a forest in Cantabria that she purchased in order to protect it from being felled. The forest is not depicted as an image: it is present in the curtain itself. Made from organic cotton and crafted using the Japanese shibori technique, the piece features organic patterns that evoke both leaves and feathers —two forms of shelter and protection. The foliage thus appears like a canopy sheltering the life beneath it. The title, taken from the song “Cosmic Dancer” by T. Rex introduces dance as an expression of celebration and shared vulnerability: a way of reflecting on existence through a sense of belonging and joy. The piece lies somewhere between the ecological and the maternal, and invites us to reflect on what it means to protect.