Rafael Tormo i Cuenca (1963, Beneixida/l’Alcúdia. Vall Farta/Ribera Alta. País Valencià)
Lives —and survives— as a cultural producer, editor, artist, and curator. Self-taught, he was shaped in the midst of the resistance context of the 1970s, where hyperrealism, punk, speed, LSD, comics, UFOs, multidisciplinarity, independence movements, and a persistent vocation for contradiction formed his counter-geography of life. No school, no career: direct practice, compulsive reading, popular culture, and frenzy.
From an idea to a word is an uncertain journey. Between thoughts and works, the path is marked by the coldness of matter and the clash with an unperturbed world. This tension is inherent to the human being: in trying to give form to the intangible, we face the paradox of inhabiting language and action, both always incomplete. Art, as a space of resistance, amplifies this paradox. Rafael Tormo i Cuenca defines his practice as a field full of uncertainties, where contradictions open paths.
In the 1980s, he began generating friction within the world of institutional art. At ARCO (1983), he made appropriations of galleries broadcast live from La Barraca on Radio 3. He later ventured into contemporary dance (1996), theatrical actions (International Theatre Festival of Sueca), exhibitions in international museums, and the Pépinières Européennes pour Jeunes Artistes grant from the European Commission. He has participated in networks such as Infraestructures Emergents and Arquitectures Col·lectives.
To inhabit the paradox is to assume that time is not linear, but multidirectional, and that the paths between times and spaces generate new connections. In his work, the viewer is not passive, but an active participant in the reconfiguration of meanings and narratives. His work transits between the village and the world, between art and life, between the minimal gesture and symbolic rupture. He distrusts the institutionalization of dissent and bets on collective activation as a form of critical existence.
His artistic practice has focused on activating community, participatory, and collaborative processes around what we call memory, forgetfulness, celebration, the political nature of practices, and intervention in public space. He has coordinated projects that have already disappeared, such as Ànimes de Cànter (1997–1999), a nomadic collective for cultural criticism, or BANUSAÏDI, the Grants Against Collective Amnesia (1999–2009), from where he co-coordinated local memory proposals and artistic interventions.
He has been present in workshops and conferences in institutional, alternative, and peripheral spaces. With the PERIFERIES project at the NAU of the University of Valencia, he has fostered encounters for reflection and action. He has developed actions from educational mediation with LaBalsa13 and with Gloria&Robert from the body, and has co-directed the poetic action festival in Terres de l’Ebre, BOUESIA, also curating the exhibition for its tenth anniversary.
He is the editor of the editorial project Això és com Tot, dedicated to post-contemporary popular culture. Projects such as LaBalsa13, Perifèries, Gloria&Robert, and Això és com Tot reflect a commitment to collectivity, the body, and public space. In these, constants such as popular culture, resistance, and play are explored. From the festive to the critical, his proposals generate a social ecosystem where celebration, play, and improvisation are tools to question dominant structures.
Implosió Impugnada (IP) is a platform where artistic actions converge that question the limits of what we call the common and its representation. IP17: Ceci n’est pas une place frees spaces and pathways that are constrained, such as in the Cabanyal neighborhood. In IP15B, developed in the Manual of Emergency for Scenic Practices, new paradigms of reality are confronted in forgotten territories, while IP9 collects resistance experiences such as the struggle of Salvem Catarroja to preserve its orchard.
Popular culture as celebration is present in IP25: Menjar a Carles Hac Mor, a performative ritual where the human becomes a thing and vice versa, questioning representation and identity memories. In IP21: Èxode Ultralocal, a festive float transforms into a space for critical resistance, confronting dynamics of power and local exaltation.
He has been part of the collectives Ànimes de Cànter, Banusaïdi, Topografies Perifèriques, Habitàre, and AVAN. He currently directs AVAN – Espais Rurals d’Investigació Contemporània, a project with the Universitat Jaume I of Castelló where counter-geographical practices, species symbiosis, pedagogies of the territory, and non-hierarchical relationships with local knowledge and marginalized spaces are developed. He is also the director of HABITARE, Centre d’Investigació i Interpretació sobre les formes d’habitar contemporani. He was the general coordinator of AVVAC for eight years and currently coordinates an ERASMUS project between Portugal, Italy, and Beneixida.
His approach is defined by interdisciplinarity and indisciplinarity. “I try not to approach art only as a liberating and residual space in order to enter and exit the spectacle,” he says. His horizon? What, despite everything, is still life, is perplexity.