The Institut de Cultura (IUC), in collaboration with La Caldera, a dance creation center, is organizing the third session of the In fieri: Translating Images series, dedicated to artistic research in the field of audiovisual creation, on Thursday, June 5th, at 6:30 PM.

In Fieri: Translating Images

Session III. The gestures of images

With the artistic interventions "De Lluny", by Verónica Navas, and "Manus Oculata", by Sara Castelo Branco and Hugo de Almeida Pinho

Thursday, June 5th - 6:30 PM - La Caldera (C/ Eugeni d'Ors 12, Les Corts, Barcelona)

Photo Gallery ©Tristan Perez-Martin

Verónica Navas's artistic practice focuses on live arts and audiovisual media, with particular attention to the material and tactile dimensions of film. "De Lluny" unfolds and refolds the film, emphasizing the multisensory nature of the cinematic world and highlighting the traces of the vanishing image. The film passes from hand to hand, escaping the concept of consumption while invoking a collective experience. Curator Sara Castelo Branco and artist Hugo de Almeida Pinho, interested in exploring the symbolic correspondences between gaze and gesture, focus on the image of hands as vessels for the multiple layers of meaning attributed to them by premodern and magical traditions, with the performance "Manus Oculata". The diverse languages of the artists featured in the third session of the series engage in a dialogue about the interrelation between hand and eye, seeking fleeting images that, nonetheless, achieve permanence through bodies and space.

Verónica Navas

An artist whose interests revolve around image, matter, and time. She develops her practice from an interdisciplinary perspective and independently of the format of expression. Since 2015, she has premiered two original stage pieces — "Until Stock Lasts (Rehearsing so that my mother’s death doesn’t catch me off guard)" and "The City" — coproduced and showcased by festivals such as GREC, SÂLMON, Temporada Alta, or TNT, and in venues like Antic Teatre, El cine rev[b]elado CA2M, Teatro Pradillo, or La Caldera. She has also collaborated on eight additional works — encompassing collective creation, directing, dramaturgy, creative guidance, project mentoring in educational contexts, and more. These works have been shared in Spain, Germany, France, Uruguay, and Argentina. Since 2022, she has been developing the long-term project From Afar (De lluny), which was in residence at La Caldera in 2023 and will continue during the 2023–24 academic year at the Àrea Tallers of UPF. For the first time, this project explores paracinematic practices and expanded and conceptual cinema, aiming to create a film that can be seen, touched, and walked through. Academically, she holds a degree in Audiovisual Communication (UPF), a Master’s in Film and TV Screenwriting (ALMA, UC3M), and a degree in Dramatic Arts (Institut del Teatre).

Sara Castelo Branco

Sara Castelo Branco is a curator, writer and researcher. She holds a PhD in ‘Arts and Sciences of Art/Communication Sciences’ from the Université Paris 1 – Panthéon Sorbonne / Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Her areas of interest are experimental and artists’ cinemas, film and media theory, visual politics, energetic and ecological politics, mythology and trans-temporality, and contemporary art. Her practice has been developing from the close articulation between academic research, writing, and the curatorship of public programs, exhibitions and experimental film screenings in institutions such as: Kunsthalle Exnergasse (Vienna, 2025), Culturgest/Museu do Caramulo (Caramulo, 2025), Centro de Arte Oliva (São João da Madeira, 2025), Brotéria (Lisbon, 2024), ICI Berlin / Bard College (Berlin, 2023), ACUD Galerie (Berlin, 2023), Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris, 2023), Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst (Berlin, 2019-2024), CRIPTA 747 (Turin, 2021), CSL (Lisbon, 2022), or Galeria Zé dos Bois (Lisbon, 2021).

Hugo de Almeida Pinho

Hugo de Almeida Pinho is an artist and researcher. He has a MA in Media Art/Media Philosophy from the Hochschule für Gestaltung HfG/ZKM Karlsruhe with a Gulbenkian Foundation scholarship (2022); and, a BA in Visual Arts by Faculdade de Belas Artes Universidade do Porto and Marmara Üniversitesi, Istanbul (2012). He was selected to art residencies at Cripta 747 (Turin 2020); Cité Internationale des Arts - Institut Français grantee (Paris, 2019-20); Künstlerhaus Bethanien - Gulbenkian grantee (Berlin, 2018-19), among others. Some of his most recently exhibitions are Our Best Machines Are Made of Sunshine (MrKunsenter, Norway 2025); After Smoke and Mirrors (Centro Arte Oliva, SJM 2025); Endless Sun: Capital Blindness (CSL, Lisbon 2025); Hierophanies (Brotéria, Lisbon 2024); Solar Capital (ACUD Galerie, Berlin 2023); Solar Influx (Arsenal, Berlin 2023); Matter Non-Matter Anti-Matter (ZKM, Karlsruhe 2022); Theater of Sun (Cripta747, Turin 2020); The Seeing Eye (Petite Galerie - Cité des Arts, Paris 2020); Terra Rara (Fundación DIDAC, Santiago de Compostela 2019); Paradox of Plenty (Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin 2019); Pedra Pedra (Appleton [Box], Lisbon 2018), among others.