Success of PHotoESPAÑA and the Mujeres en las Artes Visuales (MAV) group with the ENAIRE Foundation at Naves de Gamazo

The ENAIRE Foundation cemented its partnership with PHotoESPAÑA (PhE) with “Descubrimientos”, a gathering of professionals to discover new talent, which took place in Naves de Gamazo on 12 and 13 September and featured over 50 international participants and visionaries. The ENAIRE Foundation was represented by Gabriela Pinto.

Three women artists from different generations give voice to the ENAIRE Foundation's alliance with Mujeres en las Artes Visuales: Maruja Mallo, Paloma Navares, Itzal García

During the event, the Director of PhE, María Santoyo, thanked the ENAIRE Foundation for inviting PHotoESPAÑA to hold this photographic gathering, and noted that the participants had received a magnificent reception at the Naves de Gamazo Art Centre.

For the managing director of the ENAIRE Foundation, Margarita Asuar, "PhE boasts international prestige in the art world, promoting the most democratic genre—photography. At the ENAIRE Foundation, we have strengthened and consolidated our partnership because we firmly believe that in art, public and private sectors must collaborate to support emerging artists and recognise established artists as role models, since culture is what sets us apart as human beings".

Paloma Navares 

Paloma Navares (Burgos, 1947) won the ENAIRE Foundation's 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award, and on the evening of 13 September, she received a tribute from the Foundation, along with PhE and Mujeres en las Artes Visuales (Women in Visual Arts - MAV).

María Santoyo from PhE, Marta Mantecón from MAV and Margarita Asuar from the ENAIRE Foundation all agreed in recognising Paloma Navares as a multidisciplinary, pioneering, visionary, conceptual artist, an advocate for women who has worked with photography and video art in an absolutely unmistakable way.

"The closed eyelids IIII. Other moors series" © Paloma Navares. VEGAP 2024. ENAIRE Collection.

The final icing on the PhE celebration in Santander was provided by the ENAIRE Foundation with three viewings of Paloma Navares's open-air video projection "Closed circuit-infinite circuit", organised by the ENAIRE Foundation, where the public were able to marvel at the roaring, roaming caged panthers that took up the entire side wall of Naves de Gamazo, a projection taking up over 400 m².

This video projection is part of the project “At night. Shadows of deep sleep”, which Navares created almost 40 years ago and which features a feminist undertone, typical of her work. On this occasion, she portrays caged Eves.

In addition, the ENAIRE Foundation complemented Navares's presentation in Santander with an exhibition at the Seve Ballesteros Airport, where it set up an art capsule with photographic works by Paloma Navares that have been part of the ENAIRE Collection since 2011. This exhibition, titled “Other wastelands”, is open through 12 January 2025.  It is a photographic exhibition in which the artist links flowers to women of different cultures.

José Manuel Ballester

The exhibition "De arboris perennis" by José Manuel Balllester, who received the 2023 ENAIRE Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, was also featured at PhE Santander, courtesy of the ENAIRE Foundation, which decided to extend it.

"The public interest led us to take the decision to extend this great exhibit, in which the artist turns trees into protagonists to draw attention to our relationship with the environment. The exhibition began in June and since it did not coincide with the school calendar, we decided to extend it so that school children can have visits and workshops with the ENAIRE Foundation's outreach team. Right now, practically all the workshop and visit days have been booked by schools in Santander and the province", explained the Director of the ENAIRE Foundation, Marga Asuar.

José Manuel Ballester is a nationally and internationally renowned multidisciplinary artist who has won the National Engraving Award (1999), the National Photography Award (2010), the ENAIRE Foundation's 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award, and other prizes.

The exhibition De arboris perennis "is a meeting of painting and photography", with words by Ballester.

This exhibition can be visited until 3 November 2024 at the ENAIRE Foundation's Naves de Gamazo Art Centre, on Avenida Severiano Ballesteros 3, Santander.    

Itzal García 

The MAV Biennial of Contemporary Art comes to Naves de Gamazo with the support of the ENAIRE Foundation, presenting the artist Itzal García in PHotoESPAÑA.  

The ENAIRE Foundation and MAV presented at the Naves de Gamazo Art Centre Itzal García's exhibition project, which received a special mention from the ENAIRE Foundation at the Biennial of Contemporary Art of Women in Visual Arts, organised as part of PHotoEspaña.

On behalf of MAV, Marta Mantecón thanked the ENAIRE Foundation for its creative support.

And the Foundation's director noted the importance of MAV in supporting female artists and the quality of all the projects presented at the Biennial, a total of 175, from which MAV selected three. The ENAIRE Foundation showed its support for the artistic creation of women by granting three Special Mentions, including one to Itzal García for her project “Plastic Food”.

"The originality of Itzal's project was decisive in its selection. It is an expanded work of art in which the artist combines textile art, photography, and drone-filmed video with a photographic performance that involves audience participation", explained Margarita Asuar, director of the ENAIRE Foundation, who was on the MAV jury, together with María Ortega and Nerea Ubieto.

With her exhibition “Plastic Food“, the artist Itzal García (Vitoria, 1972) launches a message of environmental awareness to promote responsible consumption. The textile art created by the artist and her mother, Donina Argüello (Fuentes de Ropel, 1939), using traditional techniques in combination with citrus fruit waste and messages like "inherit the earth" and "time flies", prompts the public to reflect on protecting the planet and participate in the performance "I eat my clothes", where photographs are taken with a handed-down T-shirt.

The “Plastic Food” exhibition, which premiered on 13 September, can be visited until 12 January 2025.  

Maruja Mallo 

The ENAIRE Foundation is also presenting at the Naves de Gamazo Art Centre the works of Maruja Mallo (Viveiro, 1902-Madrid, 1995), which have been part of the ENAIRE Collection since 1999.

The works on display were made in 1979 by the artist in "Homenaje a la Revista de Occidente", in a large book of lithographs, of which only 200 copies were made. The Galician painter was one of the leading artists of the generation of '27, and she was part of the "Las Sinsombrero" (the hatless women), upholding freedom and gender equality in her work.  

"Tribute to the Revista de Occidente" (199/200) © Maruja Mallo. VEGAP 2024. ENAIRE Collection.

"Maruja Mallo is one of the leading Spanish women painters of figurative surrealism, with a strong personality, a critical mind, a cosmopolitan outlook, and a very free spirit. She led the "Las Sinsombrero" group and is one of the most representative figures of the Generation of '27. She started gaining recognition in Madrid in the late 20s thanks to the exhibition that Ortega and Gasset organized at the headquarters of Revista de Occidente, with which she subsequently collaborated. The motifs are fruit and vegetable elements with synthetic shapes, a geometric order and a surrealist accent", explained the director of the ENAIRE Foundation, Margarita Asuar.

Marta Mantecón from MAV and María Santoyo from PHotoESPAÑA declared "the magic of art" upon witnessing the convergence of  Mallo, Navares and Itzal García, three women artists from different generations who were inspired by nature.

Window to art

The ENAIRE Foundation is providing free access to all its exhibitions from anywhere by implementing digital museum resources. The exhibitions of the 2024 Photography Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award staged by PhE at Madrid's Royal Botanical Garden can also be viewed from the Window to Art set up in Naves de Gamazo.

"We have turned Naves de Gamazo into a modern and welcoming art centre, and we have expanded the range of exhibitions. Now the public can find more works from the ENAIRE Collection, in addition to the works of the Photography Awards that are part of the Conciencia2 Exhibition, along with works by Maruja Mallo and Paloma Navares. It is absolutely necessary that we bring the work of women artists to the fore, since gender has consigned many great artists to obscurity, and it is essential that we rediscover and learn about them to have a complete picture of the history of art, and to support young artists like Itzal García", said Margarita Asuar, the director of the ENAIRE Foundation.

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.

ENAIRE Foundation is implementing digital museum resources to boost the democratisation of art and make it accessible from anywhere in the world. These new museum resources are now available on the Foundation's website.

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 600 Seal for its safe, efficient, innovative and sustainable management of air navigation services.