Txuspo Poyo: Anónima

Azkuna Zentroa–Alhóndiga Bilbao, Society and Contemporary Culture Centre of Bilbao, presents the exhibition Anónima by artist Txuspo Poyo, the most extensive, profound, and significant monographic exhibition devoted to the artist’s work to date. Under the title Anónima, in reference to ancestral popular wisdom, this show traces much of Txuspo Poyo’s artistic oeuvre, spanning from the 1990s to the present day.

Curated by writer and researcher Álvaro de los Ángeles, the exhibition brings together a selection of works that reveal the distinctive and personal universe built by the artist, grounded in the interplay between his interest in historical and documentary themes, and its translation into artistic projects. It also offers an insight into the creative development of his practice, his working methods, and his capacity for innovation in the use of materials, formats, and contemporary artistic languages.

It is essential to explore how Txuspo Poyo shapes his artistic practice in projects such as Cadáveres exquisitos, where his interventions in hundreds of newspaper obituaries highlight the uniqueness of a legacy that belongs both to the personal and to the collective imagination. Or in projects such as Izaro, Expediente: Túnel de la Engaña or Gabinetes pedagógicos, where he portrays identity, history, and the legacy of his research work. In these cases the documentary material becomes the thread with which he weaves a multidisciplinary body of work that unfolds through video, sculpture, and photography.

Anónima invites the viewer to rediscover the depth and complexity of his oeuvre and to understand how he has anticipated many of the crucial debates that now lie at the heart of contemporary art and global culture.

Over the course of his career, Txuspo Poyo has shaped an artistic corpus that intertwines languages and media such as film, video, photography and installation, to explore the intersections between culture, technology and politics. His work often challenges the boundaries between reality and fiction, science and mythology, past and present, to create a visual narrative that invites reflection on the bonds resulting from authority, the mechanisms of control that stem from it, and contemporary history.

Txuspo Poyo (Alsasua, Navarra, 1963)
A multidisciplinary artist, Txuspo Poyo studied Fine Arts (EHU) and completed the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York as well as the Center for Advanced Digital Applications at New York University. He has received the Gure Artea Award (2006), the Unión Fenosa Award (2008), and grants from the Botín Foundation and Multiverso BBVA. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Spanish Academy in Rome (2021) and at Tabacalera (2025). He has held solo exhibitions at the Museo Artium, Centro de Arte La Panera (Lleida), Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo of Costa Rica, and Sala Montcada. Likewise, he has taken part in group exhibitions in venues such as Artists Space (New York), Galleria Nazionale (Rome), Museo Reina Sofía, Museo GuggenheimBilbao, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, the Angola Triennial, and FILE São Paulo.

Azkuna Zentroa—Alhóndiga Bilbao. Bilbao Society and Contemporary Culture Centre
Azkuna Zentroa is the Bilbao Society and Contemporary Culture Centre, with a local and international perspective open to dialogue with different community groups. Azkuna Zentroa is a place to take part in culture as a practice, process and space for experiences, through four lines of programming: Visual arts, Performing Arts, Film and Audio-visuals, and Literature. These lines dialogue among themselves generating a hybrid, multiple and expanded programming. Always with education as a way to generate critical knowledge and transform society through art and artists.