12 february – 5 april, 2026
Rooms 4 and 5. Fisrt floor
Next Thursday, February 12, at 7:00 p.m., the Eugenio Granell Foundation will open the exhibition Arrieire no camiño Arrieire no lughare se che arrieire morre que camiño has de levare by the artist Sergio Marey, curated by Eduardo Valiña; it can be visited until April 5.
Sergio Marey’s artistic practice is built on a critical interpretation of tradition, removed from any idea of fixed or untouchable heritage. For Sergio Marey, tradition is not an essential identity, but a field crossed by conflicts and inequalities. His work is situated in a space of friction between collective memory, popular culture and dissident positions, using codes, images and references closely linked to the Galician context in order to question the dominant narratives that historically sustained them. Marey resorts to elements in relation to the traditional and the rural environment as a judgment in the face of regulatory practices of bodies and identities by way of certain apprehended norms. Thus, these references are reappropriated and redefined from a critical perspective to reach those experiences and subjects that were left on the margins of the official discourse. In this way, other ways of understanding the community appear that challenge the homogeneous and idealized vision of the traditional.
Tradition is therefore presented as an unstable field that is constantly being negotiated. He uses the everyday to think about the political, leaving aside nostalgic reading in favour of a complex interpretation. Marey’s work seeks neither to preserve nor to destroy cultural heritage, but to open it up, making visible both its gaps and its possibilities.
The collective dimension occupies a fundamental place in this artistic practice. Creation is understood as a shared process, based on encounter and joint action, which allows new relationships to be activated with memory and identity. From this perspective, tradition becomes a living space, open to revision and transformation from the perspective of the present. Ultimately, Sergio Marey’s work asks a key question about which traditions are perpetuated and which are excluded, vindicating the need to imagine other possible traditions capable of accommodating a memory without exclusions.
BIOGRAPHY
Sergio Marey (Pol, Lugo, 1997) is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and cultural manager from Galicia whose practice investigates memory, identity and diversity from a political and situated perspective, deeply linked to the Galician rural world. Raised in a family linked to farmers and the hospitality business in the mountains of Lugo, his work features the landscapes, popular knowledge and forms of community life of this context. Her work articulates popular tradition and contemporary issues, with special attention to recovering marginal memories, especially those of LGBTIQA+ people and other historically silenced groups in rural areas.
Marey conceives memory as an active and political space, capable of generating new forms of care, resistance and collective accompaniment.
Trained in Fashion Design, 3D Design and Coolhunting, with a postgraduate degree in Bag Design from the European Institute of Design in Madrid, he developed an interdisciplinary artistic language that extends through installation, sculpture, performance, action art and textile creation. His projects include “Deus te livre”, “Se te não amo falleço”, “Torreiro” e “Viva Luceiro da alba”, in which he investigates the relationship between memory, body, territory and ritual.
His work has been exhibited in venues such as the Joan Miró Foundation, the Eugenio Granell Foundation, GNRation, the Galician Centre for Contemporary Art – CGAC, the Museo do Pobo Galego or the Trienal de Sarria. He has undertaken various residencies in places such as Paraíso RPM, Azala, Ao Caraño! or Cidade da Cultura. In 2023 he received the Auditorio de Galicia Award for New Artists for “Cruceiro a Santa Librada y otras mártires dissidents”, a work that reinterprets popular tradition from a queer perspective of symbolic reparation.