Academic & Research Activities

ACEAA supports and participates in academic research, cultural production and knowledge-transfer activities developed in collaboration with universities, research groups, artists and cultural institutions. These collaborations connect artistic practice with ecological thinking, territory, material culture and more-than-human perspectives, while creating spaces for interdisciplinary exchange between research and practice.

Collaborative ecosytem

ACEAA brings together instruments integrating research teams through a coherent collaborative framework

www.gaiaescultura.org

Gaia Research Group, Complutense University of Madrid
Explores the connections between matter, landscape and human experience through artistic research. Bringing together researchers, artists and educators, the group investigates relationships between sculpture, cultural heritage, archaeology, craftsmanship, biomaterials and emerging technologies. Through research-creation, exhibitions, publications and interventions, GAIA promotes dialogue between art, science and technology, using sculpture to explore memory, identity and sustainability across tradition and innovation.

www.biohx.net

BioHx Initiative explores the intersections between architecture, ecology, biodiversity and more-than-human forms of inhabitation through research, design and experimentation. Bringing together architectural practice, environmental thinking, biomaterials and emerging technologies, the initiative investigates new relationships between humans, other species, materials and ecosystems. Through research, prototyping, digital media and interdisciplinary collaboration, BioHx develops approaches to multispecies design, bioconstruction and ecological transformation, connecting architectural practice with broader cultural and environmental questions.

Suzanne Benton — Research in the United States

ACEAA has participated in an ongoing research initiative focused on the work and artistic legacy of American artist Suzanne Benton, with particular attention to her performance practice, metal masks and feminist artistic experimentation developed in the United States since the 1970s.
The research explores the relationships between body, mask, mythology, gender and performativity within Benton's work, situating her practice within broader histories of feminist art and embodied artistic research. Developed through international collaboration and archival and field-based research in the United States, the project contributes to the documentation, interpretation and dissemination of Benton's artistic trajectory.
This research remains ongoing and is connected to the research activities of GAIA: Sculpture between Body and Territory, a research group at the Complutense University of Madrid.

II International GAIA Congress — Contemporary Art in the Tagus River Environment

ACEAA collaborated in the management and organisation of the II International Congress “Sculpture between Body and Territory: Contemporary Art in the Tagus River Environment”, held from 18 to 21 September 2024.
The congress brought together national and international artists and researchers to investigate relationships between contemporary artistic practices, rural environments, traditional crafts and natural resources. Combining theoretical discussion and practice-based research, it explored how ceramics, metalwork, basketry, weaving, glass and other forms of traditional knowledge can inform contemporary approaches to sculpture, performance and installation.
The programme addressed questions including ecofeminism, contemporary ruralities, more-than-human and multispecies perspectives, traditional knowledge and the connections between material practices, body and territory.

III International GAIA Congress — The Earth as a Sentient Body

ACEAA also collaborated in the management and organisation of the III International GAIA Congress “Sculpture, Body and Territory: The Earth as a Sentient Body — Matter, Senses and Performativity”, held in Madrid and Aranjuez from 7 to 10 October 2025.
The congress approached the Earth not simply as a material or landscape, but as a living and responsive territory with which human and more-than-human bodies establish sensory, material and affective relationships.
Through lectures, artistic practices and workshops, the programme explored body–territory relations, living matter, traditional knowledge, performativity in the landscape, ecofeminism, multispecies thinking, extractivism, ecological practices and emerging relationships between craft and digital technologies.
The congress contributed to developing interdisciplinary approaches in which artistic practice becomes a form of situated knowledge and a means of reconsidering how we inhabit and relate to the Earth.