Image: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid
Contemporánea Condeduque has announced its 2026–27 season in Madrid, a programme of around 100 activities running through June 2027 and organised around the question ‘¿Aún podemos amar?’—Can we still love? Presented on 9 September by Madrid’s culture, tourism and sport delegate Marta Rivera de la Cruz and the institution’s artistic director Jorge Volpi, the season considers contemporary love in both intimate and political terms.
Volpi has framed love and its absence as a way to examine a world in which identity and freedom are at stake. His account extends from filial, erotic and fraternal attachments to bonds with communities and nations, while also considering love as a means through which power can domesticate and control. He connected the programme’s concerns to social media, algorithms and artificial-intelligence companions, asking whether love is possible with a machine without a face or body.
The programme spans performing arts, music, visual art, thought and literature, science and art, screens and expanded culture, and mediation. The Colombian poet Piedad Bonnett, recipient of the 2024 Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry, will present her recital ‘No es más que la vida’ at the start of the season.
In performance, the programme explores bodies that are desired, rejected or destroyed. ‘El invencible verano de Liliana’ and ‘Contra Antígona’ examine love interrupted by violence, while ‘La Clausura del Amor’ pushes contemporary opera to its limits. Other works include ‘Dyptik’, ‘The Seer’ and the world premiere of ‘Belvedere’, which address amorous bonds through estrangement, violence, pain or fear. Participants across the strand include Rodrigo García, Andrea Jiménez, Jan Martens, Romeo Castellucci, Milo Rau and Israel Galván.
The visual-arts programme, gathered under the heading ‘Desdobles artísticos, hablas amorosas’, includes Juan López’s exhibition ‘Shree’, intended to make visible affective experiences that language can barely name. It also includes ‘Descender’, featuring Carmen de Ayora and Toni Hervás, Ludovica Carbotta, Jimena Kato and Eulàlia Valldosera, among its participating artists.
‘Pensamiento + Literatura’ will bring Siri Hustvedt, Rita Segato and Rosi Braidotti to subjects including love, vulnerability, intimacy, power and violence in relationships. The strand also turns to animals in the home, as well as chatbots, avatars and holograms. In ‘Pantallas + Cultura Expandida’, Kate Zambreno and Leila Guerriero are among those set to address subjects ranging from social-media trends to videogame and comic-book languages, new journalism and sensory cinema.
The annual ‘Ciencia + Arte’ programme and the returning Cúbit festival will connect recent research into the brain mechanisms of love and empathy with artists’ approaches to the subject. Scientists Antonio Lazcano, José Edelstein and Lluís Montoliu are among the participants.
