Aixa Portero

Aixa Portero (Aixa Victoria Portero de la Torre, born in Málaga on 22 June 1975)is a Spanish contemporary visual artist and professor of Fine Arts at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Granada. She was the first Spaniard to exhibit at the CNAC in Belarus, Centre of Contemporary Art in Minsk and was highlighted as one of the most relevant artists in Andalusia in 2019 by the editor and writer Manuel Mateo Pérez of the newspaper El Mundo,described as "a disturbing and fascinating artist. Her works awaken in those who contemplate them a kind of confusion and sleeplessness, of agitation and ideology, of tide and threatening waves, of strange peace and vigil at the same time".
In the words of art critic Bernardo Palomo "Aixa's work subscribes to a contained cry for life; a beautiful song of peace for the world, a melodious song with lyrics - her pieces, her sculptures, her installations, those forests full of books or those birds that enclose a particular mythology are nothing more than beautiful artistic poems - that describe peace, the world, culture, the human being, existence".
==Education==
With a solid intellectual background, he began his training in Plastic Arts, specialising in painting and sculpture, at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Granada. He completed his undergraduate studies at the Sint Lukas Hoger Instituut in Brussels, Belgium. He completed a Third Cycle of Advanced Studies in Plastic Research at L’École Supérieure d’Art Visuel de Genève in Geneva, Switzerland. Subsequently he did a Postgraduate Programme at the Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, Holland.
She was a research artist in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, USA, where she carried out a large part of her doctoral research entitled: "Trans-Appariencias Tecnológicas: Artivismo en el arte contemporáneo" (Arte contemporáneo socialmente comprometido en la red desde 1994 hasta hoy), in 2006, with a European mention from the University of Granada. 
She is currently a professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Granada and a collaborating member of the Institute of Peace and Conflicts of the same university where she "keeps alive her double condition of teacher and artist".
==Artistic career==
Trained in plastic arts at the la Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Granada, where she began her career and began to gain access to prominent artistic projects and to shape a career that would be consolidated in her early years as an artist. He completed his studies at the Sint Lukas Hoger Institut in Brussels (Belgium), "while developing an interest in new trends in art and new media, and has focused his work on the Culture of Peace". Since then, "his appearances have taken place in many places; quite a few outside our borders", such as Brussels, Geneva, Rotterdam, San Diego, Los Angeles, Havana, Paris, Bogotá, Minsk and Vitebsk, among others. With deep conceptual roots. "Open books, branches, leaves, feathers, seeds? Everyday objects and fragments of nature coexist in Aixa Portero's work".
With an extensive exhibition background, her artistic career made international news when she was the first Spaniard to exhibit at the CNAC in Belarus with the project "Belarus-Spain: convergences" and her exhibition "The roots of flight", which were of great importance in the creation of bilateral relations between the Belarusian and Spanish societies, in the words of His Excellency Pavel Latushka..
His artistic career includes the following solo exhibitions: The Illustrated Forest of LIBRARTE (Artist's book fair of Castilla y León) - Monastery of San Juan, Burgos, Spain (2022); Alice through the root - Women in the Visual Arts Biennial, San Jose (Costa Rica); Pax Natura - CAC, Malaga, Spain (2021), "his return to the origin" in the first exhibition in his hometown with more than 200 pieces; Natura Root - La Cometa Gallery, Bogota, Colombia (2019) where he consolidated his international career; The roots of flight, Project NEFT_B / The Root, Belarusian Embassy in Spain, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Minsk, Belarus (2018); The Root, Museum of Contemporary Art, Vitebsk (Belarus) where he exhibited with the artist Ossip Zadkine, "one of the great Russian expressionists and a personal friend of Picasso"; The verse of Hypsipila, Sala Zaida, Fundación Caja Rural de Granada, Spain (2015) where he reflects on the Culture of Peace and made "a criticism with a halo of hope" in reference to the assassination by ETA of his father, the prosecutor Luis Portero; Minimum Death,Debla Gallery, Bubión, Spain (2013) "inspired by a leisurely reading of Emilio Prados' poetry".; Innocence sales (2004-2003) exhibited in several galleries in Spain and the USA (such as: Sala Larrea and Palacio de Las Artes y La Música Euskalduna in Bilbao, in the Palacio Carmen De Los Mártires in Granada and in the Herbert Marcuse Gallery in San Diego) where "The importance of reclaiming human rights and recovering the memory of innocence... are the axes on which the exhibition is based". In it she makes a clear denunciation of violence and terrorism as the daughter of the chief prosecutor of the Andalusian High Court of Justice Luis Portero, assassinated by ETA in the year 2000 and Innocent Herbert Marcuse Gallery, San Diego, USA (2003), among others.
In her artistic career linked to the professional world, it is worth mentioning her work in 2022 as illustrator of the complete book, La Alhambra, by Manuel Mateo Pérez; of the book collection of the prestigious publishing house Tintablanca, seal of Tiempo de Letras S.L. "A Tintablanca book is a small work of art. It combines literature, culture, history and illustration". Recently awarded by the Ministry of Culture and Sports. with the "Best Edited Books Award 2022". in the category "Art Books", with the jury's assessment: "Original work that provides a good presentation with excellent illustrations. Dialogue game with the reader".
His work belongs to private art collections in Spain and Latin America and to public and private institutions such as Santander Bank, ABC Newspaper, Málaga Foundation, Zaballos Foundation, Unesco Málaga or the University of Granada.
Category:1975 births
Category:People from Málaga
Category:Spanish people
Category:Contemporary artists
Category:Professors