Pedro Ortuño

(Valencia, 1966)

Multimedia artist, doctor in Fine Arts from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, he is a professor of Fine Arts at the University of Murcia. He combines his teaching, artistic and research work with the curating of audiovisual exhibitions. Within his artistic career he has participated with his installations and videos in different exhibitions: The Museum and Center for Humanistic Studies (MCEH), Puerto Rico (2018), Palau de la Virreina, Barcelona (2018), Havana Latin American Film Festival , Cuba, (2017), Medialab Madrid-PhotoEspaña, (2004); Metrònom Foundation, Barcelona, (2002); II Valencia Biennial, Lines of Flight (2001). He has curated various cycles of Off Bollywood audiovisual exhibitions at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (2009) and at Sala Parpalló in Valencia (2010). In his teaching career, his work as founder of the research group Art and Identity Politics at the University of Murcia in 2007 stands out, being its Principal Investigator until 2018. In 2009 he founded and directs the academic journal Art and Identity Politics. He has participated in several R&I&D projects related to identity politics and underground film/video. He is currently the Principal Investigator of the MIMECO R&D&I projects HAR2017-84915-R, Connected Bodies. Art and identity cartographies in the transmedia society (2018-2021) together with Laura Baigorri and Reset: Mar Menor.

He presents at Medialab Madrid the multimedia installation Blanca sobre negra II (2008), which consists of a projection of computer-generated images on a space on the wall framed by intertwined esparto grass, a metaphor for the connections between the technology of the present and that of the past. On the floor there are hand-woven mats that recreate an artisanal atmosphere and recall trades that have disappeared over time. The computer improvises the path along which the work travels, choosing random paths from a series of possible audiovisual routes. The work tells the small human stories that are interwoven in a silent town called Blanca. Using the documentary records, the camera delves into the micro-stories of three women weavers who tell their stories of work and routine. A network of lives that, together with other similar ones, make up a social and production system maintained at the expense of its members. The work is part of a series of projects by Pedro Ortuño that give visibility to rural areas that are increasingly precarious and marginalized from the techno-economic and globalizing networks of prosperity and power.