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XTANT Nomad 2026

Photo by Daniel Costa

 

Miscellany | 29.09.25

Back to work!

Summer is officially over and, with this week’s passing, we now have only seven months to go. Which unfortunately for us means that the time crunch started about a month ago. Contacting patrons, planning the event floor, selecting artists, reviewing volunteer applications… the works.

However, on the other hand, for you all on the other side of the screen we are already setting up the specifics for the upcoming workshops, experiences, collaborations, and the many new attending artists on the website.

Eagle-eyed website… goer-s (?) will have probably noticed that right below the pretty cover images of our landing page is a digital version of our invitation cards for XTANT’s next edition:

NOMAD 2026.

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Having stopped to explore the depths of our industry’s disconnect with its surroundings and the cultures that make it in ROOTS and HUACA. NOMAD now seeks to look towards what that deeper more symbiotic relationship with the land might look like.

As always, we’re making a disclaimer that we’re not in the business of glorifying or yearning for the past. No, in showcasing and centering the works and relationships made by nomadic people’s, the goal isn’t to say ‘this is the proper way to do things’.

Rather it is to look at what is almost a reverse image of our own society. Where we, as explored in past newsletters, have made a habit to extract and produce to a point where most of us don’t even benefit from it anymore; These groups of people, alive at the same time as us, have taken an entirely different approach.

NOMAD looks to fully exhibit the art that comes from these communities, as they protected their customs, constantly adapting them with their travel, and made their homes out of wherever their paths would take them.

Photo of artist Gaston Ugalde´s installation in Bolivia

Photo of artist´s Adrian Pepe´s creative process with wool

 

In our world where we entrench ourselves in ‘our places’ philosophically and financially; settle once and move only as a luxury, the concept of nomadic life brings up images of imagined poverty or unimaginable wealth. The actual people who live these lives are unmentioned, isolated as they are from the information structures that make ‘modern’ life.

From trace remnants in European transhumance, to the true-blue Nomadic pastoralists of North Africa, Siberia, and about a hundred other corners of earth. People, millions of people, live in ways which brush oddly with our sedentary systems.

Borders, post offices, the bureaucracy that maintains systems of social healthcare and pensions, to even things as simple as how we consume the news are built on the assumption that people live sedentary lives.

Photo of wild nettle fibre by Daniel Costa

 

Enmeshed with the rest of NOMAD 2026’s talks, installations, workshops, and film showcase there will be as many people, works and stories from these communities as we have managed to invite.

Who specifically can we expect to see at our grand opening in May, you ask?

…Please wait until we can confirm flights and visas, it always somehow manages to be a pain.

 
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XTANT, Calle Sanchez Pacheco 47, Callejon Local 1, Madrid, 28002, Spain

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