Ana Esteve Reig, the Alicante-born artist (Agres, 1986), premieres her first solo exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid. Titled Fictional Scenarios, the project unfolds across multiple rooms in the museum through a sequence of audiovisual pieces that invite viewers to contemplate identity, its construction, and how social groups shape image and perception. The show is curated by Semiramis González and runs until April 23, offering a contemplative tour through a personal exploration of becoming in a contemporary world.
In this exhibition, video art appears alongside an esteemed collection of paintings spanning the 13th to the 20th centuries, reflecting a deliberate dialogue between new media and classic masters. The program positions the gallery as a space for dialogue, where Spanish creators like Esteve Reig are presented within a broader, ongoing effort to showcase innovative forms in a setting traditionally reserved for painting. Alicante has already hosted six editions of this series, reinforcing the strong connection between regional practice and national museums.
Thyssen-Bornemisza’s traditional emphasis on painting meets Esteve Reig’s audiovisual language, a pairing that surprised many but proved to be a thoughtful fusion. The artist, who resides in Madrid, creates audiovisual fictions intended to illuminate reality and to reveal how museums adapt to evolving forms of artistic expression. The exhibition offers two distinct pieces: on the first floor, three audiovisual works appear under the umbrella of Delilah’s Documentary (2016), which probes the role of social networks in shaping contemporary identities; a second work, Claiming the Existence of Female Experts in Cinema (2021); and Fan Cam (2022), a piece about Korean music fans recording their choreography for online dissemination. Three additional videos are gathered under the heading Dead Time — an essay on waiting and desire. In addition to these newly created works, the display includes three 17th-century paintings from the permanent collection by Peter Paul Rubens, Hendrick ter Brugghen, and Willem Kalf.
“The trilogy was a challenge because I wanted videos that dialogue with images,” Esteve Reig explains. “Video is a very traditional art language, rich with history, and I needed to think about how a viewer would experience a video between frames, using audiovisual language. That consideration led to the choice of continuous loops. Still images endure in a loop, and my videos stay looping, like a moment frozen in time.”
Among the favorites in the collection, the piece Ruby, Venus and Cupid now accompanies the lobby where a group of friends gathers to watch a screen on their phones; the scene features teenagers sleeping in nearly identical poses. The work also reinterprets Bruggen and Still Life by pairing a still life with a screen emitting self-help phrases, reflecting a playful approach to artifice and desire. These elements highlight Esteve Reig’s fascination with how technology and media shape perception of interiors and everyday life.
“The selection captures themes central to my practice—identity construction through fiction in cinematic and consumer imagery, including video games, the metaverse, and social networks. It also foregrounds female representation and non-normative identities in mass media, and finally, my affection for audiovisual imagery. We are overwhelmed by images, yet few pause to analyze them, to see the symbolism, archetypes, and social constructions behind them,” Esteve Reig observes. The show invites viewers to question how images shape self-perception and social belonging.
Identity has always been a central concern: Esteve Reig notes early works addressing urban tribes and how youth positions itself within society. Her approach explores how identity formation is tied to cultural movements and social networks. She uses a diverse toolkit, drawing on youth cinema, photography, and borrowed visuals. She cites Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides and other cinematic references when describing how bedrooms can become shelters for teenagers, a motif that recurs through her work.
Her next stop is the ARCO fair, with plans to develop new videos inspired by the fair itself, including a piece on costume games and Virtual Love, plus further exploration of e-sports and digital culture.
Biography of Ana Esteve
Esteve studied Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid before moving to Kassel, Germany in 2008, where she attended Freie Kunst and the Kunsthochschule Kassel. She completed a Meisterschüler year under the guidance of artist and teacher Bjørn Melhus. Since living in Germany, her practice shifted toward video art, which remains her primary medium. She currently resides and works in Madrid. Her work has earned recognition through Injuve 2011 in Visual Arts and other honors including Youth Second Prize 2014, Circuitos 2017, and the BBVA Multiverso Video Art Scholarship 2017. Exhibitions have taken her to London, Kassel, Berlin, Madrid, and Vienna, with presentations at venues such as the Kasseler Kunstverein Museum and the Moca Museum in Taipei, Taiwan.