From the catalogue.

"Creadores" has been an essential platform for discovering local contemporary artistic activity, offering a kaleidoscopic and expansive view of artists—both emerging and established—linked to Valladolid. For this new edition, "Creadores 2021," we aim to experiment with alternative modes of production and exhibition by forming a collaborative working group. Our goal is to create a unique, complex, and cohesive collective installation that can be activated throughout the exhibition period via specific, timed actions. The inclusion of European artist Luca Arboccò—from the Creart network, selected via an open call— extends the intervention beyond the gallery walls and the local context.

We intend to explore and critically examine shared themes without sacrificing a certain "primal" boldness in the spatial layout, which is conceived as a complete, living organism. These concepts are deeply rooted in the history and character of the building itself, yet they forge intriguing connections to the post-2020 global landscape, serving as the foundation for a hybrid, collective spatial web that links us on a more open and universal level.

The Convento de las Francesas was established in the 15th century as an institution of strict enclosure, becoming a common destination for certain social elites from the surrounding region— a place of seclusion that was sometimes voluntary, yet often forced.

Of that monastic complex, the church and the cloister—known as the "Patio de las Tabas" (Courtyard of the Knucklebones)—still remain. The latter is a fascinating exercise in Gothic tracery and lamb bones embedded in the pavement: a macabre "ornament" that immortalized the inhabitants' culinary habits in a geometric, funereal tapestry. This design crystallizes a strange collusion between architecture and biology, encapsulating within a single layout both the tragedy of the food chain and the comedy of the Sunday banquet.

In 2021, we find ourselves in a situation strongly reminiscent of convents and cloisters—of forced monasticism and a sudden, life-altering lockdown. Faced with this, we seek an intimate escape within the immediate family circle, in the system's small loopholes, and in the refuge art always offers as a realm of absolute freedom—at least on paper. Dining together around a table has become a dangerous act, and is therefore more deeply desired and visceral than ever. This quintessential sacred space, consecrated to the Eucharist of bread and wine, will serve as a venue for pagan, communal celebration—a setting for new contemporary rituals. 

Paradoxically, the first action taken here—perhaps the most powerful and radical—is to clear the space of exhibition panels as much as possible, tearing them down to form a massive table-cum-pedestal along the basilica’s central axis. In doing so, the site’s sacred nakedness and essential nature—its charged, transcendent atmosphere—are, to some extent, restored.

The productive-creative practices carried out within these spaces—largely linked to gastronomy, craftsmanship, and music—will serve as a shared starting point. They help us rethink our stance on hedonism versus prison discipline, on ornamentation and its alleged "crime," and on the lightness of improvised acts versus the heavy weight of mourning and pageantry. The monastic order has been abolished. We wish to revisit the primal concept of the Greco-Roman banquet as a playful, unconstrained precursor to rigid Christian Eucharistic rituals—those convivial "symposia" where a seamless dialogue unfolded between bodily pleasure, intellectual debate, and poetic expression. Here, we envision an "artifact" of offering and celebration: a worldly altar composed of a massive, eclectic table teeming with objects, textures, and meanings—a grand, bizarre, and at times slightly mischievous feast that appeals more to the senses than to the intellect. Yet, this profane celebration of art does not seek to entirely sever ties with a certain sacred quality inherent in the sensory experience; instead, it offers a humble "Saturnalian" ceremony to be shared together before the global "great reset."

The selection of artists ranges from works unassociated with explicit forms of figurative representation to others that manifest through objects of great formal power. Underlying them all is a profound conceptual approach and a precise, distilled materialization—often involving artisanal materials such as textiles and ceramics. This heterogeneous gathering of works within the spatial arrangement seeks to redefine the space through its own memory and to reflect—openly and critically—on "the sculptural" and installation practices. It engages senses beyond sight, incorporating sound art and performance to construct an atmosphere that is fluid and elusive—acting as the central, primary material.

As in any gathering, each element here has an assigned role, a hierarchy within the installation process, and an apparent order of precedence that both mirrors and gently questions the authoritarian stance of traditional institutions. Indeed, it is akin to a game played in a circle—tossing questions and answers into the air rather than knucklebones. We cast the pieces into the gallery space, hoping the "king" and "executioner" faces will align. After all, "astragalomancy" was a method of divination throughout much of antiquity, and through these small bones, we can consult Hercules and seek oracles from him.

Yet things are not what they seem in *El Gran Banquete* (The Great Banquet). They are concealed and symbolically shifted away from their apparent meanings, in a manner analogous to Baroque semantic mechanisms: the tablecloth is not merely a tablecloth but a cosmogony designed to be viewed from the firmament; the dinnerware is arranged not for us, but for an absent herd; the delicate carpets beneath our feet conceal storms, excesses, and ringed abysses into which one might fall and lose one’s way, like Dante; the viands are *trompe-l’œil* creations of paint and bronze that remain alive on the table, escaping the confines of the plate and all defining boundaries; there are lamps that offer little light, serving instead to warm the gathering and the flock of electric lambs; the congregation’s prioress delivers homilies that call not for order, but for paradoxical subversion; napkins transform from hygienic objects into living, succulent organisms—reminiscent of the rabbits tethered to the table that historically preceded them; the latticework and Plexiglas arches create starkly geometric micro-architectures that are, at heart, merely a pretext for bringing us closer to evanescent Romantic landscapes; from the glasses, we derive only decontextualized and contradictory aromas, inviting introspection rather than a toast; and floating above it all are the psalms—or rather, a psalmody of lamentations, individualistic and "liberal," emulating the dialogue of an entire choir through a single voice exiled in an "essential confinement."

As with any ritual, we hope the exhibition opens itself to perceptions beyond the rational and the analytical, and helps us break free from this inner cage.

Juan Carlos Quindós de la Fuente. Exhibition curator.