BILBAO.- A Tree Falls in the Forest, Glenda León’s (Havana, 1976) first solo exhibition in Bilbao, opened at Azkuna Zentroa – Alhóndiga Bilbao, Bilbao Society and Contemporary Culture Centre.

This new exhibition held at Azkuna Zentroa was presented at a press conference with the attendance of Gonzalo Olabarria, Councillor for Culture and Governance at Bilbao City Council; Txomin Olabarri, Director of Azkuna Zentroa - Alhóndiga Bilbao; and artist Glenda León. The presentation was followed by a guided tour of the exhibition, including the performative activation of Conversio, one of the artist’s most recent works.

This installation offers a reflection on the universal dimension of spirituality, beyond any religious differences, emphasizing that which unites human beings. In this work, five performers wearing costumes associated with the main world religions perform a choreography synchronized to the rhythm of DJ and producer Richie Hawtin, a pioneer of world electronic music. As the movements progress, the costumes disappear and their synchronization leads to a state of ecstasy and dissolution of the ego.

Glenda León, a multidisciplinary creator, is one of the most renowned and internationally-acclaimed Latin-American artists. Her works form part of major collections, including those of the Centre Pompidou in Paris or the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. She has also represented Cuba at the Venice Biennale and participated in numerous leading international exhibitions and forums. She has developed a pioneering interdisciplinary artistic practice that brings together installation, image, music, and new media through a minimalist and conceptual aesthetic. Her work explores the tensions between rationality and spirituality, science and perception, addressing political, environmental, and sensory themes through a poetic visual language of remarkable formal subtlety.





Under the curatorship of Fernando Pérez, Glenda León, and Iván de la Nuez, A Tree Falls in the Forest is presented as a panoramic retrospective of her oeuvre, conceived as a choreographic score in which each offering activates a unique and open experience. Through a hybrid language that spreads across installation, photography, video, and audio, in constant dialogue with music, the word, and the body, the artist builds a perception arena where the visible and the invisible, the material and the spiritual, intersect.

The exhibition, organized with the collaboration of Volotea, is arranged in three inter-connected areas: firstly, a political-social hub that delves into the tensions of contemporaneity —polarization, mechanisms of power, censorship and paradoxes of progress— both collectively and intimately, with works such as Political World, Game Fields or Summer Dream.

A second area addresses nature as a system of correspondences, revealing patterns and resonances that connect diverse phenomena through a perspective that is simultaneously scientific and poetic. Butterfly Effect, About the Invisible or Contours of the World are works that question the boundaries of what we see and what we think we see.

And a third area is oriented towards the spiritual, understood as a shared dimension that embodies the duality connecting her artistic and personal codes. This applies to Conversio, one of the artist’s more recent works. This performance/installation brings together many of the themes addressed by Glenda León, and succeeds in building a system of reflection that is capable of generating dialogue between different cultures, circumstances, and ways of seeing the modern world.

The exhibition journey through Glenda León’s work continues beyond the main hall into the AZ Irratia space in the Atrium with the screening of her work Talking to God, 2018. The audio-visual work Suspension, 2020 is also presented on the screen located in the foyer of the Exhibition Hall.

For Glenda León, listening is not just a physical act, it is a form of consciousness. As such, her practice turns sound and silence into tools for perceiving the invisible, the spiritual, or the political. “If a tree falls in the forest where there is no one to hear it, is there any sound?” – the philosophical dilemma concerning the relationship between reality and perception that inspires the title of this exhibition – reflects this sensory experience.

In a world crammed with both external and internal noise but unable to listen, Glenda León proposes silence as an active space. It is a challenge that invites us to reconnect with our body and our surroundings, turning the tree that fell without anyone noticing into a metaphor for our current society and its individuals. From this starting-point, this project becomes a call for a renewed listening, one that enables us to make sense of what unfolds, cast a light on what remains concealed, and transform perception into a form of knowledge.

Although A Tree Falls in the Forest is the first solo exhibition by Glenda León in Bilbao, it is not the first time that her works have been exhibited at Azkuna Zentroa. In 2019 she took part in Never real / Always true, a collective exhibition on the symbiosis between the art system and the realm of language through the perspectives of thirteen artists.

Glenda León (Havana, 1976) lives and works in Havana and Madrid. Her works extend from drawing to video art, and include installation art, object-based practice, sound, photography, and performance. She graduated in History of Art from the University of Havana (1999; Cuba) and earned a Master’s Degree in New Media from Kunsthoschule für Medien, (2007; Germany).

The artist has developed a strong international trajectory, with solo exhibitions at museums and art centres in Europe, America, and Asia. She has also participated in a wide range of collective exhibitions at highly prestigious institutions.

She represented Cuba at the 55th Venice Biennale and has participated, inter alia, in the Dakar Biennale (Senegal), the Havana Biennale (Cuba), and the Aichi Triennale (Japan). She has won the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Prize (2020, 2005), the Pilar Juncosa & Sotheby’s Biennial Award for Artistic Creation (2021), the DKV Prize (2020), and the LARA Prize (2017).

Her works can be found in major public collections such as the Pompidou Centre (Paris, France), The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, U.S.A.), and the Musée des Beaux Arts (Montreal, Canada).