A free group photography exhibition inside LENS Escuela's The Showroom brings together eight final-year projects from the school's Advanced Course in Contemporary Photographic Creation, curated by the students themselves. Miradas en Resistencia gathers work about memory, identity and unstable territory, each project taking a different route to the same refusal: an image that won't settle into one meaning.
What it is
The eight photographers are also the exhibition's curators, deciding themselves how their projects sit alongside each other rather than handing the hang to an outside eye. Carolina Marcos Sebastián's I Lost My Name follows a journey between Spain and Ireland to examine identity lost through motherhood and migration, while In Plain Sight, by Leslie Holaday Cole, traces the Sine Iure symbol at Madrid's Church of San Ginés back to the ghost of an enslaved woman in her own family history.
Elsewhere, María Díaz's Niñas de la Guerra Civil collects testimony from five women who lived through the Spanish Civil War as children in the Extremaduran villages of Castañar de Ibor and Robledollano, and Raúl Fernández Fraile, a philosophy graduate with a Harvard master's in software engineering, turns a slow, contemplative eye on buildings reclaimed by time in Geometría del Abandono. The rest range from a roadside stop on a Leonard Cohen-referencing trip to a study of how human presence distorts nature.
Why it's worth attending
A full graduating cohort showing new work together, at no cost and in a compact space, is a different proposition to a single-artist retrospective: eight distinct visual languages, hung by the people who made them, without an outside curator smoothing out the edges. The range runs from documentary portraiture to conceptual work built around a single family story, giving visitors more to compare across the room than a themed group show usually allows.
Practical info
The exhibition opened on Friday 26 June at 19:00; the show runs through the school's normal opening hours for the rest of its run. The Showroom is a 90-square-metre space purpose-built by LENS for photography and audiovisual work. Nearest metro: Acacias (line 5), a short walk from Pirámides, Puerta de Toledo and Embajadores.
FAQ
Who curated Miradas en Resistencia?
The eight participating students, all graduating from LENS Escuela's Advanced Course in Contemporary Photographic Creation, curated the show themselves.
What is Geometría del Abandono about?
It's Raúl Fernández Fraile's project on abandoned spaces being slowly reclaimed by nature and time.
Do I need to book ahead to visit The Showroom?
No, entry is free during normal opening hours without a reservation.
Is The Showroom open on weekends?
No, it's open Monday to Friday only.
Where is The Showroom located?
Inside LENS Escuela de Artes Visuales, at Paseo de la Esperanza 5, near Acacias metro station.
