Bios
Artists, scientists, art historians and communicators pick up where different painters and creators from the past left off, inviting us to rethink our relationship with the world we live in and understand the environmental challenges we face. Want to meet them?
Joaquín Araújo
A writer, naturalist and filmmaker, Araújo claims that he has planted one tree for every day he’s lived (twenty-six thousand five hundred). He has published one hundred and twelve books and directed and written the scripts of over three hundred documentaries. Araújo is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Extremadura and recipient of the Medal of Extremadura. He received the 2nd BBVA Foundation Biodiversity Conservation Award for his distinguished track record as a communicator of environmental and conservation values.
Carlos de Hita
De Hita specialises in recording the sound of nature and the soundscape, something he started doing more than thirty years ago. He is a documentary screenwriter, author of a blog about nature and its sounds, and a long-time collaborator at Cadena SER radio. He also published a book titled El sonido de la naturaleza. Calendario sonoro de los paisajes de España. In 2016 he received the 11th BBVA Foundation Biodiversity Conservation Award.
Juan del Junco
Del Junco is an artist who explores the inter- and cross-disciplinary possibilities of contemporary art—more specifically, the figure known as “the artist who uses photography”—and field ornithology, interweaving visual codes and methods from both disciplines to form photographic installations. In 2014 he was awarded the BBVA Foundation MULTIVERSO Grant for Video Art Creation.
Rocío Alonso
With PhD in Ecology from the Autonomous University of Madrid, Alonso is a scientific researcher in the Environment Department of the CIEMAT (Centre for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research). She studies the effects of atmospheric pollution on the conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity as well as interactions with climate change. She also researches the impact of urban and suburban vegetation on air quality in cities.
Paloma Alarcó
Since 1991, Alarcó has worked at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, where she is Chief Curator of Modern Painting and responsible for the mid-19th to 20th century collection. She has curated exhibitions about the early years of modernism and portraiture in the early modern era. She is currently co-curating the show American Art from the Thyssen Collection.
Juan Varela
A biologist and artist, Varela has done conservation-related research and exhibited his work at over sixty museums and galleries in Europe, the United Kingdom, Israel and the United States. He is the official representative of the Artists for Nature Foundation in Spain. He been distinguished by the Spanish Ministry of the Environment, and in 2015 he received the 10th BBVA Foundation Biodiversity Conservation Award.
Matt McGrath
As environment correspondent for the BBC, McGrath reports exhaustively on the growing climate and biodiversity crises around the world. In 2010–2011 he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow—the most prestigious fellowship in scientific and environmental journalism—at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2019 he was presented with the 1st BBVA Foundation Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication in recognition of his efforts to inform global audiences of today’s environmental challenges.
Fernando Valladares
Vallardes, with a PhD in Biology, is a researcher with the Spanish National Research Council and an associate professor at Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid. In 2021 he received the Jaume I Award in the Environmental Protection category and the 16th BBVA Foundation Biodiversity Conservation Award for his contribution to spreading scientific knowledge about the great environmental challenges of our time.
Soledad Gutiérrez
Gutiérrez is a member of the TBA21 curatorial team. She has worked in the art world for the last twenty years, occupying different positions at such relevant institutions as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) or Whitechapel Gallery in London. She was director of CentroCentro in Madrid from 2017 to 2019.
Tonia Raquejo
Tonia Raquejo is a tenured professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Complutense University of Madrid. Working from aesthetic experience and art education, she focuses on personal development and mindfulness aimed at promoting the ecological sensibility of the self in its surroundings. She recently coordinated a project titled El arte de corporeizar el entorno: prácticas artísticas para una pedagogía del sentir [The Art of Embodying Environment: Artistic Practices for a Pedagogy of Feeling]. She is currently leading the project Arte y Cognición Corporeizada en los procesos de creación [Art and Embodied Cognition in Creative Processes] at the Complutense University of Madrid.