Cristina Lucas receives the Pilar Forcada ART Situacions – ARCOmadrid 2026 Prize
Sponsored by Honda – Greens, the award recognizes the best emerging artwork at ARCOmadrid 2025.
With a prize of €15,000, the prize was presented on Thursday, March 5, at the gallery Albarrán Bourdais stand.
Madrid, March 5, 2026.- Today the Pilar Forcada ART Situacions – ARCOmadrid 2026 Prize, worth €15,000, was awarded to Cristina Lucas, an artist born in Jaén and based in Madrid.
The prize was presented to Galería Albarrán Bourdais, which represents the award-winning artist, during a very emotional ceremony that paid special tribute to the memory of its founder, Pilar Forcada. The event featured remarks from Maribel López, Director of ARCOmadrid; Marcel Pascual, Director and Patron of ART Situacions; and jury members Lorena M. de Coral and Ferran Barenblit. The winning work will be incorporated into the ART Situacions collection.
The prize, first established in 2017, has taken on a particularly special significance since its most recent edition, when it was renamed the Pilar Forcada ART Situacions Prize in memory of the founder and director of ART Situacions, the driving spirit behind the project, who sadly is no longer with us. Her husband, Marcel Pascual, Managing Director of Honda-Greens, has taken up the mantle to continue this initiative, which his wife led with great enthusiasm and success.
About the winning work
The prize has been awarded to the work D.A.N.C.E (Dynamic Algorithm, Neural Creative Evolution) 3, which is part of a larger series by the artist Cristina Lucas.
The transparent series “Composiciones” refers to the revolution of big data: data processing, the loss of privacy, and the exponential use of screens and camera-equipped devices that enable constant surveillance. The works are assembled from key elements used in the manufacture of screens, such as cobalt, manganese, nickel, zinc, and lithium. Through the use of these materials—linked to geopolitical conflicts, child labor, and pollution, as well as to the vital development of the human body—Lucas reminds us that materiality is not abstract, but concrete.
D.A.N.C.E (Dynamic Algorithm, Neural Creative Evolution) 3, de 200 x 150 cm, measuring 200 × 150 cm, is a unique piece made with next-generation electronic components, cobalt, lithium, nickel, manganese, silicon, copper, and resin on transparent acrylic.
About the artist
Through her work, Cristina Lucas reminds us that art is a form of seduction that helps make us aware of what is happening in our society. Interested in the mechanisms of power, she analyzes political and economic structures, dissecting them to reveal the contradictions between official history, reality, and collective memory.
Working across a variety of media—including sculpture, video, painting, photography, and performance—Lucas confronts the flow of information and structures it into cartographies, installations, or images, creating possible interpretations that nevertheless always remain unfinished.
Works by Cristina Lucas include the performance “Habla” (2008), in which the artist strikes with a hammer a reproduction of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s Moses, alluding to the legend that the artist carved into the knee of his sculpture; as well as pictorial compositions made with the same chemical elements that constitute the human body, produced through the uncontrolled chemical reactions of those elements. With a distinctive satirical style, the artist interprets cultural and political stereotypes and broadens perspectives to incorporate viewpoints drawn from intimacy and everyday life.
Her work is included in international collections such as the Centre Pompidou (Paris); Fundació “la Caixa” (Barcelona); Banco de España (Madrid); Mudam (Luxembourg); FRAC Lorraine (Metz); IVAM – Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (Valencia); Kiasma – National Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki); Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven); Fundación NMAC Montenmedio (Cádiz); The Coppel Collection (Mexico); and the Bulgari Collection (Rome), among others.
Images
Photos by David Nieto