Artists:

Antía Encisa González
Carmen Suárez Marcos
César Souto Rodríguez
Elsa Bouzas
Juncal A. Castro
Laura Cid Rascado
Lucía Perdiz
Raquel Álvarez Méndez
Sandra Gutiérrez Aldao
Xoel Gómez López

At the end of 2021, the University of Vigo and the MOP Foundation (a cultural initiative by Marta Ortega Pérez) signed a collaboration agreement with the aim of promoting emerging art in Galicia through an endeavour called Future Stories. It was set in motion thanks to the success of the Peter Lindbergh: Untold Stories exhibition (A Coruña, December 2021-March 2022) and the generosity of visitors who bought merchandise from it. Thanks to that exhibition, which was brought to Galicia by Marta Ortega Pérez’s personal commitment and the collaboration of the Lindbergh Foundation, the Future Stories project was able to offer the students of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Pontevedra ten 4,000 euros scholarships for the development of art projects based on their End of Degree Dissertations. The call for projects also envisaged the resulting works being gathered together in a group exhibition at a major museum space.

During the selection process, the jury – formed by the dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Xosé Manuel Buxán, professors María Covadonga Barreiro and Chelo Matesanz, art critic Ramón Rozas, the director of MARCO, and the MOP Foundation, as promoter of the project – based their criteria on the originality of the proposals, their conceptual and thematic interest, and the formal and technical quality of the works.

The Future Stories exhibition now being shown at MARCO, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Vigo, is the end result of that process. It features the pieces created by the ten selected artists in the gallery spaces on the first floor, in accordance with the main objectives behind this initiative: to promote the professional careers and to recognize the potential of new Fine Arts graduates.

Connections and collaboration between the university ecosystem – the faculty as an “artist-generating factory” – and the Museum, as a means of experiencing a professional environment first-hand in this ultimate stage of their academic training, are essential to achieving these objectives.