The artist Pedro G. Romero received the National Prize for Plastic Arts, worth 30,000 euros and awarded by the Ministry of Culture.
The jury awarded the artist “for a consolidated career whose artistic, intellectual and material work encompasses multiple fields of meaning and apparently opposing formats (sculpture, cinema, archival productions, performances, etc.), integrating conservation and research practices into his artistic work.”
In addition, the jury highlighted that in his work, “Pedro G. Romero manages to attend to, rescue and reinsert popular culture in its most ungovernable expressions in our public sphere, investigating in a genealogical way the aesthetic and symbolic manifestations of those communities to which a space of representation has been stolen or not recognized. Their methodologies have opened new fields of artistic practices beyond institutional criticism.
The jury also considered “the milestones of his career last year 2023, with reference exhibitions such as ‘popular’ (October 2023 – April 2024), IVAM, Valencia, ‘A de Archipiélago’ (June – September 2023), in Es Baluard, Palma de Mallorca or cinematographic pieces such as ‘What goes down’ (2023-2024) MACBA, Barcelona.”
In turn, the jury highlighted among his projects “the ‘FX ARCHIVE’, a documentary collection and a thinking machine based on images of iconoclasm in Spain between 1845 and 1945, linking them to the avant-garde. The issues of aesthetics, knowledge and violence have always interested Pedro G. Romero and have materialized in a multitude of works and exhibitions such as “Treaty of Peace”, 2016. His other long-term project is “Máquina PH”, which has managed to expand the field of art with the introduction of the powers of gesture, body, language and music, flamenco with totally new tones. The performative turn in our country cannot be understood without their work.
Finally, the jury expressed that Pedro G. Romero “works to transform the structures of knowledge, the forms of presence and action in the world, in the community, with others, with many others, generally excluded from the hegemonic social form. Likewise, he has integrated a feminist sensitivity that comes from a thought of the popular and the invisible.
