The great cultural event of PHotoEspaña and the ENAIRE Foundation at the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid

The ENAIRE Foundation took part in the official opening of PHotoESPAÑA with two outstanding exhibitions: "Light of Intuition", by Lifetime Achievement Award winner Paloma Navares, and a group exhibition of the 17th Edition of the ENAIRE Foundation Photography Awards. Both exhibitions can be visited from today at the Villanueva Pavilion of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Madrid.

The opening of the main international photography competition became the great cultural event in Madrid this Thursday, with a significant number of attendees from the world of culture. Representing PHotoESPAÑA were the president and director of La Fábrica, Alberto Fesser and Óscar Becerra, respectively, and the Director of PHotoESPAÑA, María Santoyo. The Royal Botanical Garden was represented by Pura Fernández, Deputy Vice-President of Scientific Culture and Director of the institution's publishing house.

Javier Riera has received the ENAIRE Foundation 2024 Photography Award for his work LG NL

Attending on behalf of the ENAIRE Foundation were its president, José Antonio Santano, Secretary of State for Transport and Sustainable Mobility; Enrique Maurer, CEO of ENAIRE; and Margarita Asuar, Managing Director of the ENAIRE Foundation. Also attending, on behalf of the Directorate General of Cultural Affairs of the Presidency of the Government, was Juan José Areces.

Representing the Historic and Cultural Service of the Air and Space Force were General José Luis Figuero, Colonel Javier Cáceres and Laura Lavado. Also present were representatives from institutions with which the ENAIRE Foundation collaborates, in both the aeronautical and artistic sectors, such as FÍO, ADAR, AIRBUS, MAV and Asociación Blanco, Negro y Magenta.

The opening also featured an unprecedented number of representatives from various embassies. Maha Suleiman Taha Ayoub, Ambassador of Sudan; Rahin Wpeerzada Rahin Wpeerzada, Ambassador of Afghanistan; Mariama Maira, second advisor from the embassy of Mali; Loubna Toutouh, cultural attaché at the Moroccan embassy; Çağla Soykan, head of cultural affairs at the Turkish Embassy; Marlie Santana, representative of the Embassy of the Dominican Republic; and Raluca Talos, attaché at the Romanian Embassy.

Also in attendance from the world of culture and associations were Amparo Zaracés, president of the Asociación Clásicas y Modernas; Natividad Carpintero, from the Department of Energy of the Universidad Politécnica; and Concha Mayordomo and Eva Rodríguez, from the association of women artists Blanco, Negro y Magenta.

The following Photography Awards jury members were also present: Daniel Canogar, visual artist;  the aforementioned María Santoyo, Director of PHotoESPAÑA;  Semíramis González, the independent curator;  María Ortega representing MAV (Mujeres en las Artes Visuales); and Ángeles Imaña, Director of Conservation and Cultural Projects for the ENAIRE Foundation.

Most of the winning artists and finalists of the 17th Photography Awards were also present, as well as winning artists from previous editions, such as Marina Vargas, the first prize in 2023, and the artists José Manuel Ciria, Víctor Zurbarán, Eraga and Alejandro Primaga, all featured in the ENAIRE Collection.

It is worth noting that the artist Paloma Navares, the ENAIRE Foundation's 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award, was accompanied by her daughter Paloma Muñoz, who is also an artist.

[Family photo of PHotoEspaña, in which Fundación ENAIRE has participated with two inaugural exhibitions of its Photography Awards: in the front row, second from the left, the Secretary of State of the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, José Antonio Santano, and, in the center, the director of the contest, María Santoyo].  

2024 ENAIRE Foundation Photography Awards

The ENAIRE Foundation Photography Awards have been held since 2005, presented as part of PHotoEspaña to showcase a comprehensive and diverse sample of Spain's photographic landscape.

A total of 2,069 photographic proposals by 764 candidates from 18 nationalities were submitted at this 17th edition. One of the highlights was the balance in the genders of the candidates, with a ratio of 358 women to 406 men. All the works submitted showcase originality and professionalism, as well as depth of the topics presented.

The interest in the ENAIRE Foundation Photography Award confirms the consolidation of this award for promoting careers as professionals in the art of photography, as evidenced by the Foundation's alliance with PHotoESPAÑA.  

The first prize went to Javier Riera for his work LG NL, a photograph of the intervention with the landscape, in which the artist highlights the relationship between geometry and nature with a meditative character that aspires to expand the perception of space. Geometry is interpreted as a natural language prior to matter, which can establish with it a subtle and revealing type of resonance.

The second prize was awarded jointly. One recipient was Beatriz Ruibal for her work Olea Europaea, which poetically evokes the vulnerability of plant species to the environmental and climate crisis. Her work shows an olive flower, magnified from the microscopic to a monumental scale, exploring its complex beauty and fragility, beckoning us to protect biodiversity, often hidden in everyday life and in the small, that is at risk of disappearing.

The other second prize recipient was Patrik Grijalvo for his work MAAT Lisboa, made using photographs of real spaces, which he then prints, deconstructs and reconstructs to create three-dimensional compositions. Cutting along the lines that delimit some of the planes of the space represented, it manages to introduce an irresolvable ambiguity between the depth that can be inferred from the photograph, and that to which its fragments are subordinated in the final composition.

Third place went to Greta Alfaro for La Villa de los Misterios’ (The Village of Mysteries).  This piece results from a performance carried out in an abandoned winery, in which a female boxer hits the bag hard, reminiscent of the relationship between working the land and the ancestral link between blood and wine. The work also lends itself to a multitude of interpretations.

2024 PHE special mention

Amaya Hernández received the 2024 PHotoESPAÑA Special Mention for her work Memoria de un espacio (Memory of a space). The market in Olavide reinterprets the Mercado de Olavide in Madrid, which was torn down in November 1974, a paradigm of Spanish rationalist architecture. As a poetic gesture, the work restores the memory of the light entering the building's south door moments before its destruction.

The finalists, which are also part of the ENAIRE Foundation's group exhibition at the Royal Botanical Garden, are:

- Álvaro Deprit for La escalera.

- Ana Amado for La Ventana.

- Andrés Gallego for Interior with Young Woman Seen from the Back.

- Carlos Folgoso Sueiro for Bestas.

- Gloria Oyarzábal for La Blanche et la Noire I.

- Jesús Umbría for Lola y Vera.

- Lucía Gorostegui for Ventana Mediata.

- Manuela Lorente for Él pone la música, nosotros bailamos.

- Pablo García_JeJe for Autorretrato.

- Paco Valverde for Alicante 0026.

- Renata Bolívar for Hotel El Retorno.

- Tomás Justicia for Una ramita de grosellas sobre un pedestal de piedra después de Adriaen Coorte.

- Txuspo Poyo for Gabinetes pedagógicos.

As in previous editions, there will be a special public's choice award, which will be decided based on likes from a QRNavilens and on the ENAIRE Foundation's social media platforms, during the group exhibition of the selected works.

During the premiere of PHotoESPAÑA, the ENAIRE Foundation organised a guided visit to the exhibitions, which was directed by Ángeles Imaña, Director of Conservation and Cultural Projects. 

The winning works, the PHE special mention and the finalists are part of this group exhibition, which can be visited until 31 August at the Royal Botanical Garden.

Paloma Navares. Luz de intuición

The ENAIRE Foundation has awarded Paloma Navares its achievement award for a lifetime dedicated to artistic creation and to exploring the limits of a theme that, perceptively at first (light of intuition) and determined afterwards, becomes a mantra without searching for it: the feminine universe.

Paloma Navares is a female benchmark in international art. Paloma Navares's extraordinary power is that her work remains fully relevant over the decades, conscientiously, intuitively and subtly provocative.

The exhibition is a retrospective selection of her work, structured into three narrative groups.

In the first, Navares reimagines works of classic art from the gender perspective, long before this possibility had been conceptualised. She embodies the daily subtleties of the feminine condition in a firm and poetic way. 

In the second, she captures the beauty of Nature and heralds it as Mother, as a feminine metaphor, and endlessly delves into its concerns, its unifying threads that lead her to a thousand stories, in countless cultures and, once again, to the silent cry of women.

In the third, she deals with post-humanism, referencing herself, seeking out Milenia, her creation, finding it and recognising that there is an infinite number of Milenias, beyond post-humanism. Nobody but her is able to free the women trapped in classical works of art, in oppressive cultures, in aesthetic models and modifications required by current norms, and to explore Artificial Intelligence from a feminist perspective.

New museum resources

This year, the ENAIRE Foundation will incorporate new digital museum resources. A digital twin of the Royal Botanical Garden and a virtual tour accessible from the ENAIRE Foundation website will allow the award-winning photographs of the 17th edition to be viewed from anywhere in the world. This will boost the democratisation of art, an area of activity that began with Margarita Asuar's joining the management of the Foundation no more than 70 days ago.

Paloma Navares's Luz de Intuición and the ENAIRE Foundation's 2024 Photography Awards exhibitions will be open to the public until 31 August.

Royal Botanical Garden (Plaza de Murillo, 2. 28014 Madrid).

Monday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Addmission €6.

About ENAIRE Foundation

Is a cultural institution of the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility that, in addition to managing, preserving and exhibiting the ENAIRE Collection of Contemporary Art, engages in a comprehensive annual programme of activities that focus on aeronautical art and culture. Notably, it is one of the institutions that currently provides the most support to photography through its annual prizes - which have become a benchmark for professional photographers - and by hosting exhibits.

It is the only foundation in Spain that combines the two seemingly disparate themes of art and aeronautical culture, bringing them together by undertaking a programme of activities that promote the study, research, knowledge and dissemination of aeronautical culture, integrating history and modernity to raise awareness of the world of aviation in our country.

The Naves de Gamazo are the first permanent home of the ENAIRE Collection of Contemporary Art, an example of collaboration between government agencies that was made possible thanks to the partnership and joint efforts of the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, the Government of Cantabria, through the Office for Culture, Tourism and Sport, and the Port Authority of Santander, which share the operating expenses of the centre in order to ensure the present and future viability of this cultural project.

About ENAIRE

ENAIRE is the air navigation service provider in Spain.

As a company of the Ministry of Sustainable Transport and Mobility, it provides en route control services for all flights and overflights from five control centres in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Gran Canaria and Palma, as well as approach services to every airport in the country.

In addition, 46 airports receive communication, navigation and surveillance services from ENAIRE, which also maintains their air traffic control systems, and 21 of them, including the country's busiest airports, rely on its aerodrome air traffic control services.

ENAIRE is Europe's fourth largest air traffic manager and participates in the A6 Alliance, a coalition of air navigation providers responsible for over 80% of European air traffic, and which is seeking to modernise the air traffic management system. It is also a member of other international alliances promoting the Single European sky, such as SESAR Joint Undertaking, SESAR Deployment Manager, iTEC, CANSO and ICAO.

ENAIRE, as the responsible agency identified by the Ministry of Sustainable Transport and Mobility to implement the U-Space system in Spain, will, through its digital platform, provide the Common Information Services (CIS), which are essential to facilitate U-space services to drones and Urban Air Mobility in cooperation with local air traffic services, so that all types of aircraft can fly safely in the same airspace.

ENAIRE has received the highest score in Europe on the aviation safety key performance indicator for four years in a row. It has also been awarded the EFQM 500 Seal for its safe, efficient, innovative and sustainable management of air navigation services.