SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE.- TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes opens its first Contemporary Biennial 2024, titled La proclama herética (The Heretical Proclamation), an exhibition that brings together the work of artists who, through various disciplines and languages, present their works as forms of resistance. They propose new perspectives that expand our vision of the world and challenge the restrictions imposed on our identities and historical narratives.

Curatorial text

The heretic, seen from the prism of power, is a confrontation with the status quo. The act of proposing alternatives, be they political, historical, based on identity or culture, contrary to the monolithic and hegemonic reality of established powers is a gesture of opposition and of believing in the possibility of real change that appears to decrease by the day. The proclamation can take the form of written text, voice, or image, the visual form of poetry, and any media in which fissures emerge, that can be detected by those in power, but not always controlled.

How is it possible to break with a dogma within a structure defined by the legitimation and absolutism of the institutional and academic format? The biennial questions its own structure, formats and systems in order to address the systematic constriction of our identities and the formats of our historical narratives.

The Heretical Proclamation brings together the work of artists who come from diverse positions and languages ​​but who all counter narratives of power. Artists offer us ways to see new perspectives and to expand our knowledge without fitting into pre-established limits, neither social nor temporal. This exhibition showcases the work of artists who pass through connected lines of investigations; the curatorial connection brings forth a heretical questioning of the contemporary within an exhibition structure that invites you to become entangled in its snaking path. The twelve artists, selected through an open call, create dialogues between them that take questioning positions that intersect and mix with each other, forming the following four thematic narratives: Tracing Histories, Lineages of the Present; Identities Against the Grain; Rooted into Place, Violence against the Earth; and Methodic Transmutations.

This proclamation calls for authentic proposals, both artistic and curatorial, against those promoted by the political-social canon. A public program will accompany the main exhibition with interventions by artists and other cultural agents that add escape paths, enriching the proclamation in choral dissonance.

Curators: Raisa Maudit & Àngels Miralda

Exhibited artists: Abdessamad El Montassir, Al Akhawat, Anna Englehardt · Mark Cinkevich, Carla Marzán, Dejan Kaludjerović, Ezra Šimek, Izaro Ieregi, Lamia Joreige, Laura Mesa Lima, Maï Diallo, Miguel Rubio Tapia, Victor Leguy · Ariel Kuaray Ortega · Gabriel Bogossian.

Focus artists: Lucía Dorta Abad, Jose Iglesias García-Arenal, Anna Moreno · Bernardo Zanotta y Lara Tabet

Public programme participants: Julia Aznar Gutiérrez, Pablo Borges, Yaiza Hernández Velázquez, Helena Lugo, Martí Manen, Onda Corta, Larisa Pérez Flores, Por Asalto y Camilo Tonon