SPAIN arts & culture turns 10!

  • Music
  • Washington, D.C.
  • Thu, December 09, 2021
  • 6:30 pm — 9:30 pm
SPAIN arts & culture turns 10!

Come toast for SPAIN arts & culture’s 10th anniversary! There will be live music, paint, food, drinks, and many more surprises… Don’t miss it!

2021 marks the 10th Anniversary of SPAIN arts & culture, and the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain has prepared a very special publication to celebrate the best of our decade, inviting old friends to join us and highlighting some of the programs that still resonate with us. In May 2021, we started releasing the chapters of our celebratory publication to spread our joy through the year as we were looking forward to our reunion. And the day has come: the 10th Anniversary Party is here!

Since 2011 SPAIN arts & culture has been supporting the best of Spain in the U.S., and we couldn’t have done it without your fabulous support. Thank you for accompanying us these past 10 years!

SPAIN arts & culture’s 10th Anniversary Party

To celebrate this past decade, SPAIN arts & culture invites you to join the celebration on December 9th at 6:30pm at their so-called home, the Former Residence of the Ambassadors of Spain.

DJ Skygaze will be in charge of the music, illustrator Adolfo Serra will be giving the final touch to the hall, and, as good Spaniards, food and drinks won’t be forgotten! But if you really want to discover everything that will happen, you will have to wait, come, and see… it will be an evening full of surprises.

Guests will also be able to visit the current exhibition Illustrating Spain in the US, a project that aims at highlighting the presence and legacy of Spain in the U.S.

Twenty years is nothing… or so the famous Tango song says. So, ten is half of nothing, which at the same time is a lot, or at least enough to celebrate them as they deserve. And if said celebration is about a cultural project, then we may be treading on slippery grounds, as this is a complicated and uncertain domain where projects are usually discontinued, even though, paradoxically, continuity is an essential prerequisite for their success.

SPAIN arts & culture was born ten years ago as an initiative of the then cultural Counselor in Washington D.C., Guillermo Corral, to provide Spanish cultural actions in the United States with an effective tool: a brand that would be able to bring together under the same umbrella all Spanish cultural activities in this country while making its own mark for the work carried out by the Cultural Office, presenting a contemporary image of Spain far from the most typical places.

— Miguel Albero Suarez, Cultural Counselor of the Embassy of Spain in Washington, D.C.

About Adolfo Serra

Adolfo Serra studied Advertising and Public Relations, but soon returned to his childhood’s passion: drawing, taking up pencils and watercolors at the Escuela de Arte 10 in Madrid. Since then, his table has been filled with colors, papers and textures. For Serra, illustrating is deciding, telling, observing…

His illustrations have been featured at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair (Italy), Bratislava Biennial of Illustration (Slovakia), Sharjah Children’s Book Fair (United Arab Emirates), Ibero-American Illustration Catalog (Mexico), CJ Picture Book Awards (Korea), Mostra Internazionale d’Illustrazione per l’Infanzia Sàrmede (Italy) or China Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair (China). He also won an artist residency in the Royal Spanish Academy in Rome for the project Bomarzo.

In 2020 the book Memory of the Snow by Julio Llamazares and Adolfo Serra, published by Nórdica Libros won the First Prize for the Best Edited Book 2020 granted by the Ministry of Culture of Spain. Part of Serra’s professional activity is dedicated to the development of workshops and laboratories related to illustrating and drawing, both for children and adults.

About Skygaze

Skygaze is the musical project of Jaime Tellado, an architect by profession and an amateur musician from an early age. In 2013 he began his career having performed at festivals such as Sonar (2015), LEV (2015, 2017 and 2019) or MIRA (2014 and 2017) and playing for streaming platforms such as Boiler Room. In 2014 he was the winner of the Residency at Laboral Ciudad de la Cultura. In 2015 he participated in the Red Bull Music Academy BassCamp held in Madrid. He has published on many labels such as Love Our Records, Neonized, Sin Hilo, Solid Tapes, or Riverette.

Winner of the Villa de Bilbao award (2017) in the category of “electronics and new trends,” in September 2018 he released his third LP named Freedom. In 2020 he self-released his fourth album, called Bloom, selected by Andrew Jervis (CEO of Bandcamp, Ubiquity records) as “Album of the week” on the Bandcamp platform. Recently, he has released his fifth album called Nostalgigia, a tribute to his hometown, Gijón.

His music has been used in commercial projects for brands such as Springfield, Skullcandy, Kappa, El Corte Inglés, fabricc or sonar + d. His musical proposal is heterogeneous, based on the abstract beat-construction that ranges from slow tempos close to heritage hip hop, to tempos closer to the dance floor such as house or jungle.

About Illustrating Spain in the US

llustrating Spain in the US is a creative dialogue that combines the graphic expressiveness of comics and their authors, with the inquisitive perspective of scholars who have written a series of complementary articles. Comic authors have built comic strips that feed on academic knowledge and demonstrate that Spain has been part of the American reality since long before the very foundation of the American country. This Spanish energy continues to be present in the imagination, talent and creativity that emanates from everything Spanish and so fascinates Americans. This energy is also found in the scientific thinking of the Spaniards who made the United States their second home while they made —and still continue to make— surprising advances.

Check out the 10th Anniversary publication.

Venue

Venue map

Former Residence of the Ambassadors of Spain, 2801 16th St NW, Washington, DC 20009

Admission

Credits

Presented by the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain in Washington, D.C.

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