Speakers

Luis Lafuente Batanero

General Director of Cultural Heritage, Madrid City Council

State Civil Administrator with an extensive career in which he has held various national and regional administrative responsibilities, including Deputy Director of Promotion and Management at the Historical Heritage Agency of the Community of Madrid and General Director of the Fine Arts and Cultural Heritage Agency of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport. www.patrimonioypaisaje.madrid.es

Delia Piccirilli

Curator LuzMadrid

She has an extensive experience as artistic director of socio-cultural programmes and major events in the public space for institutions and foundations, which she has combined with her career as a visual artist, with exhibitions and works in collections such as the ICO Foundation, Tabacalera and the Martani Foundation (Bologna). She is in the faculty of the Master’s Degree in Cultural Project Management at La Fábrica. www.ciudadanokien.com

Lara Elbaz

Lighting Designer, APDI member

Lighting designer who combines her professional activity for permanent and ephemeral architectural spaces with an intense educational activity, participating in national and international workshops and conferences and teaching Lighting Design at IED Madrid, where she has directed the Master’s degree in Architectural Lighting Design, and at the UPC Barcelona. She has held the Presidency of the APDI Board of Directors from 2019 to 2021. www.laraelbaz.com

Ezequiel Nobili

Lighting designer, Artist and AAI member

He graduated in Audio-visual communications at the Escuela Panamericana de Arte, and he began his professional career as a stage lighting designer in 1988. Throughout his creative career he has worked in various fields and disciplines of the performing and audiovisual arts, in projects that stand out for their search for a perfect balance between the artistic, the aesthetic and the experimental use of a specialised technology in permanent change. At the same time, he combines his artistic work with teaching at the Master’s degree in Ephemeral Architecture at the Polytechnic University of Madrid and various functions in the Board of Directors of the AAI. www.donlucero.com | www.ezequielnobili.com

Jessica Ferey

Programme Manager, LUCI Association

As Programme Manager for LUCI Association – the international network of cities on urban lighting – Jessica Ferey manages many of LUCI’s annual events and projects. Jessica is project manager for the Creative Europe LAiPS project (Light & Art in Public Spaces) and oversees LUCI’s activities under the Art & Culture pillar, including the Light Festival Working Group and all things relating to creative lighting. Jessica has a multidisciplinary background that includes arts management, events management, art history, and theatre. In previous roles, Jessica was Deputy Director of the Global Cultural District Network and administrative assistant to the Director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. She holds a Master’s degree in Arts Management from American University (Washington D.C.) and a Bachelor’s degree in Art History from Virginia Commonwealth University. www.luciassociation.org

Antoni Arola

Designer, APDI Member of Honor

He has a long career in which he has developed from lighting products to furniture, perfume packaging, interior design projects and ephemeral installations, all of which he has combined with teaching, workshops, artistic experimenting, and lighting research. His unique versatility has been recognised with the National Design Award 2003 and several Delta and Red Dot Design Awards amongst others. www.estudiantoniarola.com

Charles Sandison

Artist

British born, he lives and works in Tampere, Finland. He has developed works with real-time computer-generated video projections combining language, form, architecture and movement. He has had an interesting teaching activity at Le Fresnoy (Lille) and the Sorbonne (Paris); his installations have been presented internationally and his work is present in major collections such as the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid), Kiasma (Helsinki) and the Bonn Art Museum, among others. www.sandison.fi | www.maxestrella.com

Javier Riera

Artist

Geometric light projections based on a real intervention experience on “the space and time of landscape”, which brings him closer to Land Art installations. He has participated in exhibitions in museums and has made interventions in national and international public spaces, while he continues his teaching activity at Photoespaña Masters and at the Francisco de Vitoria University in Madrid. www.javierriera.com

Juan Fuentes

Lighting Designer, AAI member

Designer whose artistic line is based on perception and geometry, provoking feelings and proposing immersive experiences to the public, blurring the boundary between real and virtual. After studying architecture, he specialised in the field of lighting and digital production. His multidisciplinary training allows him to fully develop his designs, using different technological and handcrafted techniques. www.juanfuentestudio.com

Federico Manzarbeitia

Architect

He has developed his profession both in the free practice of Architecture and in the Administration, where he was Head of the Landscape and Public Art Service of the Cultural Heritage Agency of Madrid City Council. He has always been connected to cultural projects and activities and involved in the development of infrastructures such as Matadero Madrid, Medialab-Prado and Centro Centro amongst others. His activity has focused on the urban landscape and public space, participating in the design of artistic interventions in the city and in the development of initiatives such as the first “LuzMadrid” Festival.

Miguel Ángel R. Lorite

Director of Intervento, APDI Member of honor

He graduated in Physical Sciences and specialised in lighting at the UPC and the UPM. For 20 years he was part of the Department of preventive conservation of cultural heritage at the Spanish Cultural Heritage Agency. In 2005 he took over the management of Intervento, a company dedicated to museum and historical heritage lighting. Since 2019 he has been an emeritus consultant and has published several books and important articles. www.intervento.com

Lidia Benavides

Artist and Doctor in Fine Arts

Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the UCM. Her main lines of artistic and academic research investigate the meaning of light as a visual language, utopian projects, technologies in contemporary art and visualisation techniques as activators of creativity, concepts on which she has given lectures and written publications in various media. She has exhibited her work in fairs, galleries and museums around the world, and her work can also be found in private and public collections. www.lidiabenavides.com

María Güell

Lighting Designer, APDI member

Certified Lighting Designer (CLD), member of Arquin-FAD and founding director of La Invisible Lighting Design Lab Studio. She combines her activity as a freelance designer in multiple public and private projects with the curatorship and artistic direction of the LlumBCN Festival, her classes at Elisava and Eina design schools, as well as directing the Master’s Degree in Architectural Lighting Design at the UPC. www.lainvisible.pro

María Gil de Montes

Lighting Designer, APDI member

She began her professional activity as lighting designer specialising in heritage and cultural spaces. Throughout her career she has worked on projects of different scale and typology, with a focus on projects with sustainability criteria for ecological and sustainable architecture. She combines her professional activity with teaching at IED Madrid and the UPC in Barcelona and her current position as a member of the Board of Directors of the APDI. www.mariagildemontes.com

María Baqueiro

LuzMadrid Sustainability Team

Consultant in the field of sustainability, in the industrial and cultural sectors. Sustainability manager for several festivals in Galicia and promoter and coordinator of the Pacto Cultural Sustentable, a Galician alliance to work jointly and in a coordinated way in the incorporation of the sustainability approach in culture, aligning cultural practices and Agenda 2030. www.eco-event.es

Marisa Santamaría

Host of LuzMadrid Conference

Researcher, curator and communicator of innovation global trends and the evolution of design. She writes about design, architecture, trends, talents and contemporary movements for prestigious national media. She teaches and lectures on global design trends at Poli.Design Politecnico di Milano, IE Design & Architecture, Master in Interior design at IADE. She is the strategic director of Red de Diseño del Foro Brands of Spain.