The opening of “30 Years of Irreverence and Vision in the Fuentes Angarita Collection” took place last February 25 in Madrid
Museo La Neomudéjar in Madrid presents 30 Years of Irreverence and Vision in the Fuentes Angarita Collection. The exhibition traces three decades of one of the most significant private collections of politically and socially engaged art in Latin America. The show offers a critical and in-depth reading of the Venezuelan and Latin American context. It also establishes itself as a key reference point for understanding the tensions, memories, and forms of resistance that run through the region.
The exhibition opened one week before the beginning of Madrid Art Week. It marks the arrival in Spain of the Arts Connection Foundation (ACF) in its new, more global phase.
Test Pattern, by David Palacios
The exhibition brings together more than 130 works in multiple formats. The FAC stands out for its multidisciplinary nature and for being a pioneer in the preservation of video art and performance documentation. It also safeguards formats that historically have served as a trench for dissent.
In dialogue with Venezuela
The reading rooms Venezuela: cartography of a wound and Memory Has the Shape of a Body articulate the exhibition’s narrative through the trajectory of artist and collector Andreína Fuentes Angarita, situating the collection as a space of listening, a living archive, and a site of anticipation. In dialogue with contemporary Venezuela and with the fragmented experience of its diaspora, the works sketch a future that approaches the present: a territory where memory persists and refuses to forget, the body resists and endures, and thought transforms and shifts.
The Liberators, by Andreína Fuentes Angarita
Within this framework, art does not propose closed answers; rather, it activates an intimate revolution of thought capable of reimagining belonging, rootedness, and the possibilities of what is yet to come.
The exhibition’s curators, Néstor Prieto and Omar Castañeda, propose a bold and complex reading of a collection with a strong political charge — particularly in relation to Venezuela — at a turbulent and fragile moment not only for the region but also on a global scale.
Also conceived as a political map of identities from a queer perspective, the collection articulates a shifting geography in which body, memory, belonging, and resistance are constantly negotiated, proposing a reflection on the idea of the “collective self.”
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by Daniel Canogar
The exhibition unfolds across four spaces, conceived as territories of reflection where the works engage in dialogue with one another and with the social and political contexts that traverse them.
An archive of solidarity in the face of exile
Beyond the acquisition of objects, the Fuentes Angarita Collection (FAC) reveals itself in this exhibition as a platform of support and resistance. Andreína Fuentes Angarita, artist and founder of ACF, built this collection as an exercise in active solidarity, accompanying dozens of Venezuelan creators who, after leaving the country in search of better conditions, found in the foundation support to safeguard their artistic heritage and regularize their immigration status in the United States.
The collection functioned as a safe passage for works that could not be exhibited in their country of origin. In this way it became a custodian of the historical memory of the diaspora.
The exhibition received wide coverage in Spanish media. Andreína Fuentes Angarita gives statements
The exhibition brings together a broad selection of works that shape a collection built over thirty years.
It includes the work of 68 artists: Alexander Apóstol, Amparo Sard, Andreina Fuentes Angarita, Ángel Delgado Fuentes, Audino Díaz, Beto Gutiérrez, Carlos Estévez, Carlotta Boettcher, Celia D. Luna, César Rojas, Claudio Perna, Consuelo Castañeda, Consuelo Méndez, Dan Perjovschi, Daniel Canogar, Daniel Medina, David Palacios, Deborah Castillo, Diana Blok, Diego Damas, Erika Ordosgoitti, Evelyn Valdirio, Food of War, Francisco Narváez, Fran Beaufrand, Gabriela Morawetz, Gastón Ugalde, Geandy Pavón, Gladys Triana, Gonzalo Fuenmayor, Gustavo Marcano, Hamlet Lavastida, Hans Breder, Hernán Barros, Hugo Palmar, Irene Pressner, Isabel Cisneros, Jesús Hdez-Guero, Lee Materazzi, Liliana Porter, Liu Bolin, Lucía Pizzani, Luis Salazar, Manuel Herreros de Lemos, Manuela Johanna Covini, Marcelo Montealegre, María Teresa Hincapié, Mariano Vargas, Marta María Pérez Bravo, Martin Castillo & Maria Antonia Rodriguez, Mateo Manaure, Milton Becerra, Miru Kim, Muu Blanco, Nadin Ospina, Nela Ochoa, Nelson Garrido, Néstor García, Omar Castañeda, Raúl Marroquín, Ricardo Arispe, Rolando Peña, Suwon Lee, Sydia Reyes, Teresa Mulet, Ultra Violet, Víctor Rodríguez, Yucef Merhi.
The collector’s voice: Artivism and truth
Andreína Fuentes Angarita offers an unfiltered vision of the context that gave rise to the collection. “Not many of us dared to practice artivism inside and outside Venezuela,” Fuentes Angarita states.
“My success comes from always being faithful to what I believed. I have always been drawn to the social and the conceptual. The situation in Venezuela has always been heavily censored; now much more of it will begin to come to light.”
Rehearsing the National Posture, by Alexander Apóstol
30 Years of Irreverence and Vision in the Fuentes Angarita Collection thus proposes a space of confrontation, memory, and critical thought, where art becomes an active tool for reading the present and imagining possible futures.
Subsequently, Arts Connection will look toward the future as the official sponsor of the 20th New Art Award (ARCO/BEEP Electronic Art Award) at ARCOmadrid 2026. In this way, the institution connects the preservation of political memory (in the museum) with the promotion of technological avant-garde (at the fair).
Exhibition “30 Years of Irreverence and Vision in the Fuentes Angarita Collection”
February 25 – April 27
Museo La Neomudéjar.
Address: C/ Antonio Nebrija, s/n. Madrid.
Opening hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 11:00–15:00 and 17:00–21:00