Segovia and Madrid,
Ouroboros It is the ancient symbol of a snake or dragon that forms a circle with its body, alluding to the constant cycles of renewal of nature – and which came, from Egypt, to Western tradition -, and also the title of an extensive project by the photographer Laura Torrado. It can be seen in three spaces in the province of Segovia (the Esteban Vicente Museum, the Cathedral of that city and the Real Fábrica de Cristales de la Granja de San Ildefonso) and also in the Real Fábrica de Tapices de Madrid.
Under the curator of Alicia Chillida, these four exhibitions share a plot: she has conceived them as pieces of the same baroque altarpiece, as scenes linked in different registers in which references to the past and the present converge. The dynamic relationship established between one presentation and another can be understood as a game of mirrors tinged with symbolism: circular self-portraits will appear in our path, horns that refer to the moon or its inhabitants (the goddesses of destiny) and, of course, those snakes that shed their skin, renewing and being reborn like the satellite in its different phases. Almost all of Torrado’s motifs die and regenerate.
In the hands of this Madrid artist, red alludes to the beginning of time and figures in a static position can refer to the baroque through the grace of theatricality; a good part of its images and videos can be compared with the popular ones tableaux-vivants French of the 17th century. In some cases, they even stage historical compositions, giving them another meaning.
It happens like this with Las Meninas -His Infanta Margarita does not receive a ewer, but a pomegranate, an allegory of fertility; or with Woman bathing in a river (1654) by Rembrandt, source of his video installation check the queenevocative of the desire and seduction of the first image. The real and the fictitious, thanks to the use of photos and these inspirations, seem to come together in many of his works.
We will also see veiled pilgrims; Venus without a mirror -unless that reflection is constituted by the viewer-; Goyesque drawn shadows that personify, at the same time, what is created and what disappears; or vanitasborn as inert scenographies of the ephemeral, which collect lace, ashes, hair, damaged flowers, books or veiled portraits, arranged in the liturgical order of the altar objects.
And we will also contemplate spindles and rosaries converted into blown glass sculptures; paper offerings that allude to biology and Titian’s Danae who receives the golden shower; or drawings of crowns or gargoyles that constitute metaphors in themselves.
In the Segovian Cathedral, his works are inevitably related to the temple and its architecture. In front of the altar of the chapel of San Frutos, a paper sculpture has been arranged that recreates an embroidered cloak; and in front of the altarpiece of Juan de Juni in the chapel of La Piedad (Crying over dead Christ), an unguentary woven, again, in the Royal Tapestry Factory that refers to that of Mary Magdalene. Its design is based on the object represented by Ian Franz van den Hecke in the 17th century piece Ulysses accepts Alcinous’s gifts.
Glass ointment jars also await us at the Royal Factory of La Granja, now addressing this motif from the parameters of transparency, light and fragility.
Torrado offers a modern revision of the articulation of the altarpiece as an arborescent form of infinite projection, in space and in its readings.
Laura Torrado. “Ouroboros”
ESTEBAN VICENTE MUSEUM
Plaza de las Bellas Artes, s/n
Segovia
Until May 17, 2026
