The Veranos de la Villa Festival welcomes the art and culture of Japan

In this its 40th edition, Japan will be the guest country of the 2024 Veranos de la Villa Festival, organised by the Department of Culture, Tourism and Sport of the Madrid City Council. During the summer, more precisely from 9 July to 25 August, a wide range of cultural activities will take place in different locations around the city, allowing residents and visitors to discover Japanese culture through its artists.

Kinpaku. Japanese folding screens and fans

From 23 July to 25 August, Espacio Cultural Serrería Belga will be the venue for an exhibition that will give Madrileños and visitors the unique chance to see a collection of ten folding screens (byôbu, “wind walls”) and sixteen fans from the 16th and 18th centuries, the golden age of Japanese painting.

Kimono, a changing identity: a century in the spotlight

On the same dates and in the same space as the Kinpaku exhibition mentioned above, visitors will be able to embark on a journey through the history of an ancestral garment, the kimono, from the dawn of the 20th century to the present day. This exhibition is curated by the Valencia Kimono Club Association.

Hiroaki Umeda + Somatic Field Project: Assimilating / Moving State 1

Hiroaki Umeda is a creator, multidisciplinary artist and one of the leading figures on the Japanese avant-garde art scene. She and her company, S20, will be bringing her two most recent choreographies to the Veranos de la Villa Festival on 24 and 25 July. The venue will be the Theatre of the Condeduque Centre for Contemporary Culture. Organised by the Japan Foundation in collaboration with S20

Magda Labarga: Kamishibai

Kamishibai, which literally translates as “paper theatre”, is a form of storytelling that originated in the Buddhist temples of Japan in the 12th century, and which, following its revival between 1920 and 1940, became part and parcel of Japanese children’s culture. Ideal for family audiences, this show can be seen at Espacio Cultural Serrería Belga every weekend during the month of August. It combines Japanese graphic art, stories, legends and traditions.

Gêmu: visual culture and Japanese video games

Video games are one of the most recent forms of cultural transmission and certainly one of the ones that have had the greatest impact. Curators Marçal Mora, Víctor Navarro and Alejandro Rodríguez invite us on a journey from Japan to Spain to explore Japanese visual culture through video games. We can embark on this journey every day from 26 July to 25 August at Espacio Cultural Serrería Belga.

Expokon!

Visitors will be able to discover some of the most popular sports manga characters and delve even deeper into Japanese sports culture through stories of self-improvement and friendship, in this exhibition at Espacio Cultural Serrería Belga from 26 July to 25 August, in collaboration with Ficomic and Manga Barcelona.

Itadakimanga!

The most delicious exhibition of this edition of the Veranos de la Villa Festival is curated by Oriol Estrada in collaboration with Ficomic and Manga Barcelona. From 26 July to 25 August, visitors are invited to Espacio Cultural Serrería Belga to discover the fascinating world of Japanese cuisine through manga and anime.

Manga Kids Academy - The Expo

Japanese schools, with all their idiosyncrasies, provide one of the most popular settings for manga and anime series. This exhibition at Espacio Cultural Serrería Belga from 26 July to 25 August, in collaboration with Ficomic and Manga Barcelona, is full of information and images to help us understand all the peculiarities of Japanese educational institutions.

Art, passion and solera

The Central Courtyard of the Condeduque Centre for Contemporary Culture will be the venue on 14 and 15 August for Art, Passion and Solera, a show by Arte y solera (the Mayumi Kagita and Hiroki Sato Flamenco Dance Company) that seeks to find common ground between flamenco and kabuki, with a special guest appearance by the well-known actor Kazutaro Nakamura. Organised by the Japan Foundation in collaboration with Arte y solera.

目[mé]

From 14 to 17 August, the Japanese contemporary art group [mé] will be taking advantage of the Veranos de la Villa Festival to use the city of Madrid as the setting for an unexpected project that local residents and visitors to the city will discover in due time. Organised by the Japan Foundation.

More activities

Japanese visual culture workshops, conferences, guided visits, talks about gastronomy, manga and Japanese calligraphy workshops, guided tours of the exhibitions and demonstrations of the tea ceremony are just some of the parallel activities, organised by Casa Asia, designed to complement this celebration of Japanese culture and art during the Veranos de la Villa Festival.