The Madrid City Council Celebrates Art Week with a Special Program

• The premiere at Cineteca Madrid of Albert Serra’s latest work dedicated to Tàpies (fe sense obres morta és) and Paul McCarthy’s performative audiovisual project A&E.
• Plaza Matadero hosting the 10th edition of CAN Art Fair Madrid (formerly UVNT Fair) from March 5–8.
• FORMA Design Fair, the international fair for collectible design, debuting in Nave 1 of Matadero Madrid, March 4–8.
• The return of Art Madrid at the Galería de Cristal, Palacio de Cibeles, showcasing contemporary art.
• The Art Week program, which runs from March 2 to 8 and extends to surrounding days, features Matadero Madrid, CentroCentro, and the Galería de Cristal del Palacio de Cibeles as key venues. It coincides with major fairs such as ARCOmadrid (45th edition), CAN Art Fair Madrid, FORMA Design Fair, and Art Madrid, offering exhibitions, talks, cinema, artist encounters, and open days designed to engage both locals and visitors.

Pulgar: A Site-Specific Work by Mónica Mays in Nave 0

Mónica Mays presents Pulgar, part of the Abierto x Obras program. From February 26 to May 24, a series of sculptures tracing memory and combustion—from Ribera de Curtidores to the old Matadero’s cold storage—shapes the installation, where refrigeration, body instrumentation, and fire collide within the exhibition space.

The exhibition, created specifically for this iconic Matadero Madrid space, opens on February 26 with a dialogue with the artist and a guided visit. During Art Week, March 6 at 6:00 pm in Espacio Taller, Mónica Mays and curator Cristina Anglada will host a public discussion. Both the activity and exhibition access are free until capacity is reached.

Mays (b. 1990, Spain) works across sculpture and installation, intertwining autobiography, material processes, and historical archive. Her pieces combine domestic object assemblages that overflow, distort, or transmute. Drawing on Catholic bodily horror and Baroque iconography, she works with excess, ornamentation, and exuberance. Mays was a resident at Matadero Madrid’s Artists Residency Center in 2021 and recently received the ARCO Award 2025.

Open Days at the Artists Residency Center

The Centro de Residencias Artísticas (CRA) in Nave 16 of Matadero Madrid is a shared workspace for artists and cultural practitioners to exchange processes of creation, research, and experimentation. Open days allow residents to share their work with the public—a key moment to engage with contemporary Spanish art.

Thursday, March 5 and Saturday, March 7, 11:00 am–3:00 pm: residents from visual arts (Andrea Aguilera, Taxio Ardaz, Antonio Fernández Alvira, Mar Guerrero, Martínez Bellido, Julia Llerena, Elisa Pardo Puch, Simón Sepúlveda), music (Maite Gallardo Alba), art and education (Costa Badía), and other projects (Debajo del Sombrero, AMECUM, Medialab research residents Andrea Muniaín, Paula Ramos, Calin Segal, Álvaro Soto) will participate.

Cineteca Madrid: Where Cinema Meets Visual Arts

From March 3–12, Cineteca Madrid serves as a meeting point for cinema and art. The program opens with Albert Serra’s fe sense obres morta és, a radical and sensory exploration of Antoni Tàpies’ work. On March 4, Paul McCarthy presents two pieces of A&E, a hybrid project combining performance, drawing, and film to question identity, power, and desire, in collaboration with the SOLO Collection, which will also present large-format McCarthy drawings in March.

Cineteca grants carte blanche to curators Estrella de Diego and Germán Labrador. De Diego (Madrid, 1958) programs three sessions featuring works by Luis Buñuel, Man Ray, and Clouzot, including a lecture on March 5 titled Choreographer-Filmmakers: The Cinema of Maya Deren and Yvonne Rainer. Labrador (Vigo, 1980) explores marginal poetics, youth cultures, and alternative memories of the Spanish Transition, with screenings of Viva la muerte (Fernando Arrabal, 1971), Arrebato (Iván Zulueta, 1968), and Demonios en el jardín (Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, 1982) on March 10, 11, and 12, respectively.

Additional highlights include collective screenings, premieres like El brujo: Julio Zachrisson (Diego Julián, 2025) and Yrupẽ (Candela Sotos, 2025), and the session With a Little Help From My Friends, curated by Sally Gutiérrez Dewar. Tickets are available at cinetecamadrid.com.

10th Anniversary of CAN Art Fair Madrid

The International Fair of New Contemporary Art returns to Plaza Matadero for its 10th edition under the new name CAN Art Fair Madrid (formerly UVNT Art Fair). From March 5–8, it features 50+ galleries, half international—the largest participation to date.

Three new sections debut this year:

Counterflow (curated by Croatian Saša Bogojev) showcasing provocative projects honoring trailblazing artists.

CAN Design (curated by Marisa Santamaría) exploring intersections between art and design.

Solo/Duo Projects, highlighting emerging galleries with monographic proposals.

Latin American art returns in Foco LATAM, curated by Christian Viveros-Fauné under the theme “New Surrealisms,” while Young Galleries, for galleries under three years old, doubles its space to present ten projects.

FORMA Design Fair: Collectible Design

Nave 17, Matadero Madrid, hosts FORMA Design Fair Madrid, Spain’s first fair dedicated to collectible design, March 5–8. Featuring over 40 exhibitors, it includes a public program of talks and professional activities called (Per)FORMA, presented by Madrid Design Festival and the City Council’s Culture, Tourism, and Sport Department.

Art Madrid at Palacio de Cibeles

From March 4–8, Art Madrid returns to the Galería de Cristal, Palacio de Cibeles, for its 21st edition, bringing together 35 national and international galleries. The fair emphasizes emerging and established galleries while making contemporary art accessible to diverse audiences. The exhibition space invites dialogue between works, spanning new mediums, reimagined traditional techniques, and pieces exploring technology, identity, memory, and territory.

Collecting at CentroCentro

CentroCentro reinforces its commitment to collecting with exclusive visits to “Madrid Colecciona”, targeted at national and international collectors invited by ARCO.