Rubén Santiago's work critically analyses the ways in which networks of power articulate contemporary societies and the diverse ways in which regulations, systems of control and cultural phenomena shape collective identities and social landscapes.
Through installations, projects for specific spaces and contexts, videos, objects, publications, curatorial proposals and other hard-to-define cultural artefacts, Rubén's work aims to influence the consensual attribution of symbolic value while reflecting on the mechanisms by which collective memory is formed.
By strategically adopting long-term methodologies and processes, his practice becomes a tool in which the active role of the artist seeks to question definitions of the real.
Lives and works in Porto, Portugal. He studied sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Complutense University of Madrid and at the Escuela Superior de Arte Massana in Barcelona. His artistic practice scrutinises the mechanisms by which collective memory is formed and poses a poetic and incisive reflection on how different societies manage and regulate symbolic value. Her body of work unfolds through installations, contextual and site-specific projects, online mechanisms, video, objects, publications and other cultural artefacts.
Strategically adopting long-term processes and ongoing methodologies, Rubén sees his practice as an extended experience that permeates every aspect of his daily life. Public presentations of his work become negotiation tools through which he seeks to question and recalibrate definitions of the real.
Rubén Santiago has been exhibiting internationally on a regular basis since the early 2000s. He has presented works and projects in venues such as the Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven (Netherlands), the Centre Pompidou, Paris (France), the CCCB (Centre de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona), CGAC (Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea) and CCEBA, Buenos Aires (Argentina), among others.
He has also participated in public art programmes, as well as in galleries and experimental spaces and collective projects, deploying a praxis that sometimes expands the areas of action usually attributed to the figure of the artist.
His work can be found in collections such as: CGAC, Santiago de Compostela; Fundación Caixa Galicia, A Coruña; Mediateca del C.C. Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz City Council; Fundação PLMJ, Lisbon, Portugal; Colección Luis Adelantado, Valencia and private collections.