New Exhibition Celebrates the Work of Esther Aldaz
The new artistic production, curated by Marta Mantecón, showcases a selection of the most notable works by the Canary Islands artist from the past decade.
The Atlantic Centre of Modern Art (CAAM) in Gran Canaria presents the exhibition Morar, dedicated to the work of Canary Islands artist Esther Aldaz. This exhibition, curated by Marta Mantecón, will be open to the public from 25 September to 22 February 2026 at the CAAM-San Antonio Abad space, with free entry.
Exploring Patterns of Existence
Morar is an exhibition framed within CAAM’s core aim of reviewing and promoting the careers of artists from the Canary Islands, alongside national and international contemporaries from various generations. These artists share a solid body of work that enriches contemporary artistic discourse, as highlighted by CAAM director Orlando Britto Jinorio.
The project includes a selection of works created over the last ten years, all connected by a common theme: the act of dwelling. These photographic pieces reflect actions carried out by Aldaz in various locations, including Cairo, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Havana, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Barcelona, El Hierro, and Santa Lucía de Tirajana. Additionally, there are works encompassing different disciplines and languages that engage all the senses, transforming the exhibition spaces into inviting areas for interaction.
Concept of Dwelling
“Esther Aldaz explores alternative forms of dwelling that range from the body to language, delving into the boundaries between the intimate and the public, the personal and the shared, as well as the political. This reveals the immense fragility and vulnerable nature of our existence. The concept of dwelling appears as a transient refuge, deeply unstable and perpetually under construction—much like identity—ultimately becoming a utopia given the impossibility of any form of permanence. In Aldaz’s work, home signifies not rootedness but its opposite. Seeking shelter or a place to be is part of our animal essence, which also emphasises the irreducible otherness and wandering condition of our being,” explains curator Marta Mantecón.
Space for Reflection
In addition to key works from her portfolio, such as Salir a Flote, Romancero, and Refugio provisional, this exhibition features recent pieces like the installation La mujer de las 3.000 canciones (n° 867), created specifically for this show. Located in a specially designed quiet room, Aldaz invites visitors to enter, sit, or recline on a soft carpet while listening to a poem-song performed by the artist, all while contemplating a trapeze suspended from the ceiling. “This is a space to be inhabited for a few moments, transporting us to different—if not opposing—experiential territories. It creates an atmosphere conducive to meditation and rest, while also reflecting the inherent risks and vertigo contained in a trapeze,” notes the CAAM director.
Thoughtful Engagement
Orlando Britto Jinorio emphasises that Aldaz’s projects are “thoughtfully conceived, intelligently articulated, of high sensitivity, and exquisitely finished. There is a profound discursive solidity within a balanced, changing, and multidisciplinary formal framework tailored to each project. Throughout her two decades of artistic production, we observe that a significant portion of her work is related to the experience of dwelling.”
As a nomadic artist, Esther Aldaz traverses both physical and metaphorical spaces through her intellectual and creative journeys, encompassing memory, philosophy, literature, and music. “I can inhabit any possible space—be it physical, mental, or emotional,” summarises Britto.
New Modes of Dwelling
The artist constructs places to explore new manners of dwelling. “We all move, explicitly or implicitly, and one can feel like a stranger in one’s own home. In my work, there is sometimes a sense of estrangement from the familiar that becomes alien—a kind of unheimlich that Freud used to define the inversion of the familiar into something sinister or unsettling,” observes Aldaz. In her projects, she reflects, “I often feel like Odysseus, always trying to reach a home that remains elusive. We need utopias because without them, life lacks horizons.”
The Role of the Body
Regarding the performative dimension of her work and the role of the body, Aldaz underscores, “The body is the measure of all things. It is also our first home. Presence activates mechanisms in the pieces that give them diverse lives depending on who occupies their interior. I see absence as the potential for presence or a memory of it. Opposites are essential for existence.”
About the Artist
Esther Aldaz Brunetto (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1979) holds a degree in Fine Arts from Complutense University of Madrid and has also studied Art History there. She has lived in Las Palmas, Madrid, and London, participating in numerous national and international exhibitions and public art projects.
Notable projects include La casa contenida, developed at the El Tanque Cultural Space in Santa Cruz de Tenerife; Tallar la decepción presented in the group exhibition Anatomía de lo leve, Atlantic Centre of Modern Art, Las Palmas; Salir a Flote at Villa Ada in Rome; Habitar una palabra at the Cervantes Institute in Cairo and the Maq’ad of Sultan Qaitbey in Cairo’s City of the Dead; and De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de futuro at the central core of the XIII Havana Biennial.
In 2020, she exhibited Una cartografía de la libertad at the Joan Brossa Foundation in Barcelona. Her writings have appeared in magazines focusing on thought and creativity such as the magazine Carta from the Reina Sofía National Museum of Art.
From July to November 2024, her piece Abecedario de cielos will be displayed in the exhibition Über die Grenzen at the Palace of Quintanar in Segovia.
About the Curator
Marta Mantecón, an art historian from Complutense University of Madrid and a graduate in Tourism, has been active in the art sector since 1999, undertaking roles in exhibition curation, cultural project coordination, teaching, and contemporary art writing from a gender perspective.
For a decade, she directed the Robayera Gallery in the Cantabrian town of Miengo and is a member of the teaching team for Design degrees at CESINE University Centre. She also teaches Contemporary Art History seminars at UNATE (Cantabria).
Mantecón collaborates with various associations and institutions and is part of the editorial board for the magazine Atlántica from CAAM and the editorial team of M-Arte y Cultura Visual.
