The climate crisis merged with art at Hay Festival Segovia this weekend as Colombian sculptor Ricardo Cárdenas unveiled his latest work: Esculturas en Libertad (Sculptures in Freedom).
Installed in the city's Huerta de Félix Ortiz garden, Esculturas en Libertad evokes an increasingly besieged and fragile natural world through a series of interactive sculptures that represent the traces of Colombian deforestation.
Inspired by his trip to Hay Festival Cartagena earlier in the year, where the climate crisis and Amazonian deforestation were centre stage, his work seeks to awaken public consciousness about how we can reverse the harmful effects on nature caused by human action.
The exhibition launched on Friday 20 September with a special concert starring students from the Reina Sofía School of Music in collaboration with the Prosegur Foundation and the Albéniz Foundation and runs to 30 September. Alongside the garden installation, Cardenas has also contributed his artwork Nube (Cloud) to the cityscape for the Festival, installed in the middle of Plaza del Azoguejo next to the iconic Acueducto de Segovia.
Ricardo Cardenas was born in 1966 in Medellin, Colombia. He graduated in Civil Engineering and Fine Arts, causing his abstract sculptural work to reflect a deep knowledge of materials and engineering processes. Inspired by the late Colombian sculptor Edgar Negret, Ricardo Cardenas’ work builds on the legacy of constructionism, creating pieces that display a unique technical intelligence and emotional energy. His work has been exhibited mainly in Latin America and it is part of several important private and public collections such as the Cisneros Fontanals Foundation (CIFO), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Lima, and the Museum of Modern Art in Bogota.
Sheila Cremaschi, director of Hay Festival Segovia, said: "It is an honour to bring the work of Ricardo Cárdenas to Segovia at this time of ecological catastrophe. Art and culture plays a vital role in raising public consciousness and Cárdenas sculptural interventions feel more essential now than ever. Walking through it's impossible not to be struck by humanity's impact on the world, and the potential for change."
Find our more about Ricardo Cárdenas' work here and explore the full Hay Festival Segovia programme here.