From March 5 to 9 in Madrid, ARCOmadrid 2025 transformed IFEMA into a dazzling artistic forest, where the theme “Amazonia” resonated not only as a call for environmental protection but also as a catalyst for profound dialogues between art, humanity, and nature.
With “Amazonia” as its guiding thread, this year’s edition embraced a bold perspective—turning the tropical rainforest into a vivid metaphor for the intersection of ecology, cultural memory, and future technologies. At the heart of the theme was the specially curated section “Wametisé: Ideas for an Amazofuturism”, where 15 pioneering galleries came together to imagine a “post-Amazon” vision — a hybrid structure where people, trees, and spirit coexist.
“Amazofuturism” is not merely an aesthetic movement but a philosophy—responding to ecological crises, deforestation, and the erosion of indigenous cultures through the language of creativity and imagination.
In particular, the architecture studio Mesura elevated the visual experience to a new level by redesigning the shared space as “A Trade-Fair Metropolitanism – vol. 2.” Inspired by the natural rhythms of the Amazon, they transformed the entire fair into an open artistic metropolis, where booths dissolved into a visual ecosystem that encouraged exploration and dialogue.
More than 1,300 artists from 36 countries took part, creating a multifaceted panorama that ranged from established names to experimental young talents. Among them, Spanish sculptor Jaume Plensa once again made his mark with monumental human heads carved from marble and quartz, embodying stillness and meditation within a bustling environment.
Artist Pol Taburet (France–Guyana) creates fierce, haunting layers of painting that bridge reality and the metaphysical within the currents of Caribbean memory.
Meanwhile, Adelaide Cioni (Italy) chooses textiles as her medium to create abstract spaces with a meditative quality.
It is impossible not to mention the “Opening” section, where young galleries such as Artbeat, Fermay, and Eins Gallery brought a wave of experimental art, helping to shape new languages for the future.
In recent years, ARCOmadrid has shown a steady commitment to diversifying the geographic and cultural landscape of contemporary art. The 2025 edition witnessed a strong presence of Middle Eastern artists—an inspiring intersection of memory, identity, and contemporaneity.
French–Lebanese sound artist Tarek Atoui transformed the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum into a series of majlis—the traditional “living rooms” of North African and Middle Eastern hospitality. Here, audiences were immersed in Amazigh–Arab music and craftsmanship, the result of Atoui’s three-year collaboration with artisans and musicians in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains. His work, At-Tāriq (Morning Star, 2025), comprises five listening stations featuring archival recordings reworked with contemporary electronic music, creating an emotionally rich soundscape that reimagines the land of Tamazgha—the homeland of the Amazigh people.
Michael Rakowitz, an American artist of Iraqi descent, has spent more than two decades bringing forward images of Iraq that transcend war—through food, artifacts, and cultural narratives. His project The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist (since 2007) is an effort to recreate more than 7,000 artifacts lost from the National Museum of Iraq after the war. Since 2015, he has expanded the work to reconstruct the reliefs of the ancient city of Nimrud. Rakowitz uses papier-mâché techniques with Middle Eastern food packaging and bilingual newspapers to reimagine color and context. This material choice both recalls the consumption of Eastern culture by the West and reflects the erasure of human value and identity in that land.
The art spaces at ARCOmadrid are not confined within booths. Instead, they form an open ecosystem where market, ideas, and community operate together.
From a market perspective, ARCOmadrid plays a guiding role in shaping artistic value and global collecting behavior. Many major transactions are sealed here, generating significant economic momentum for the creative industries.
On the intellectual front, curated sections and thematic forums help shape new artistic languages, ranging from ecological issues and identity to technology and metaphysics. The fair becomes a place where critics, scholars, and emerging artists find inspiration and a shared voice.
On the community level, ARCOmadrid has moved beyond the boundaries of the fair itself to become a citywide art festival—engaging museums, independent spaces, publishers, and restaurants, turning the art experience into a multi-sensory, multidimensional journey of connection.
ARCOmadrid 2026 will take place from March 4 to 8, 2026 at IFEMA – Feria de Madrid, with the main theme ARCO 2045.
