The César Manrique Foundation (FCM) will host on Thursday, April 30, at 7:30 PM, the conference titled (Un)veiling Melancholy: Art, Memory, and Political Management, which will be given by Yayo Aznar, professor of Art History at UNED. The event will take place in the Sala José Saramago (La Plazuela, Arrecife) and will be broadcast live on the FCM's website and YouTube channel.
During her presentation, Aznar will analyze some of the main plastic strategies in relation to the visibility of recovered memories, considering both the proposals of certain artists considered fundamental in this regard, and the —much debated— issue of the public monument. Regarding memorials, the historian will focus on aspects such as conservation, as well as their new construction.
The final intention, it suggests, is to reflect on a public management of memory that, with the victim at the center of the debate and, in many cases, of artistic and monumental production, does not seem capable of reaching the objectives that were supposed to be expected.
This conference is part of the FCM reflection space Divergent Views. It is a forum in which critics, historians, and art professors have participated to review the valuations and canonical concepts established in contemporary culture about historical periods, trends, artistic movements, creators, or the existing connections between different arts.
Since its origins, this cycle has featured the presence of scholars such as Estrella de Diego, Kosme de Barañano, Juan Manuel Bonet, Simón Marchán, Manuel Borja Villel, Luis Fernández-Galiano, Aurora Fernández Polanco, Eduardo Prieto or Blanca de la Torre, among others and, recently, Jaime Vindel.
Yayo Aznar Almazán is a professor in the Department of Art History at UNED and dean of the Faculty of Geography and History. She has been a researcher in several projects funded by the Ministry, the last of them titled: Experiences of the Political in Francoist Spain.
Among her publications, books stand out such as The Channel of Memory. Art in the 19th Century (Istmo, 1998), Action Art (Nerea, 2000), Public Memory (UNED, 2002), Guernica (Edilupa, 2004), Shared Memory. Spain and Argentina in the Formation of a Cultural Imaginary (Paidós, 2005), Fools. On the Representation of Madness (Micromegas, 2013), Political Gazes in the Land of Fantasies (Akal, 2019) or Images Against Everything. Archives of the Anti-fascist Guerrilla (Sans Soleil, 2025).
