'Beta Generation' ('Generación Beta')

"What do you know about your mother's childhood, or your father's? It is deeply moving to observe how the major social and political themes of our era are reflected in personal biographies." Under this premise, Austrian creator and photographer Franzi Kreis presents Beta Generation (Generación Beta) at the Central de Diseño in Matadero Madrid—a multidisciplinary exhibition combining large-format photographic portraits with a meticulous audio and audiovisual archive.

Organized by DIMAD in collaboration with the CALLIOPE. Join the Dots program—an initiative dedicated to giving visibility to women's work in the arts, culture, and science—the exhibition offers an immersive journey through the impact of collective memory and intangible heritage on contemporary identity.

Through studio photographs and recorded conversations, individuals aged between 7 and 97 recount the lives of their ancestors: daughters recalling their mothers' stories and sons evoking their fathers' pasts. In each piece, body language, inherited gestures, and the memory rendered visible before the camera engage in a direct dialogue with voices narrating episodes interwoven with European and global history.

Beyond historical testimony, Beta Generation seeks to explore the mechanisms of human resilience when confronted with family memory.

The title directly references Generation Beta, the new generational group that will be born over the coming years. Having traveled to cultural venues in cities such as Moscow, Sarajevo, Rome, Cairo, Budapest, Bern, and Buenos Aires, the exhibition arrives in Madrid raising a universal question: what legacy, both tangible and intangible, do we choose to hand down to the generations of tomorrow?