Where the Fire No Longer Burns
In August 2025, a series of wildfires devastated the province of Ourense. After the flames subsided, the landscape was reduced to a fragile, unstable surface of ash where recognizable forms had largely disappeared.
Where the Fire No Longer Burns
In August 2025, a series of wildfires devastated the province of Ourense. After the flames subsided, the landscape was reduced to a fragile, unstable surface of ash where recognizable forms had largely disappeared.
This project focuses on the residual traces left on the burned ground. The tracks of emergency vehicles cut across the terrain like a form of writing without language: repetitive marks that do not narrate the event directly, yet inscribe it onto the surface.
The images do not attempt to document the fire, but rather to approach its impossibility of representation. Ash becomes both subject and medium—an unstable material that resists fixation, continuously shifting between presence and disappearance.
STATEMENT
My practice operates between two opposing conditions: music and photography. While music unfolds through time and remains intangible, photography attempts to arrest time and stabilize what is inherently unstable. Rather than resolving this contradiction, my work develops within that tension.
Across different bodies of work, I explore the image as a space where memory, perception, and materiality are negotiated. Projects such as Nihil, Basso Continuo, and Poetics for the Memory of a Foreign War are not conceived as isolated series, but as interconnected lines of research that revolve around recurring concerns: the instability of meaning and the erosion of memory.
These works often begin with identifiable references—historical, cultural, or experiential—but progressively move towards processes of reduction and fragmentation. The image shifts away from description and becomes a field where forms dissolve, leaving behind traces and discontinuities.
Rather than reinforcing photography’s traditional role as a medium of preservation, my work questions its capacity to retain experience. In this sense, the images do not construct narratives but interrupt them, opening spaces where meaning remains suspended.
Through this approach, I am interested in producing visual structures that operate within a state of tension. A practice that does not seek resolution, but sustains that condition as a way of reconsidering the act of looking.
CV
Miguel Auria (b. 1985, Ourense) is a Spanish visual artist whose work investigates photography as a space of tension between image, memory, and material processes. His practice is informed by a dual background in music and visual arts, which shapes an ongoing inquiry into time, perception, and the limits of representation.
His work has been exhibited in institutions and art spaces across Spain and internationally, including the Conde Duque Contemporary Art Centre in Madrid, the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, and the Colegio de España in Paris. He has developed a consistent presence in competitive exhibitions and contemporary art programs, being selected and shortlisted in numerous awards such as the Auditorio de Galicia Prize, the La Brocense Contemporary Art Prize, the ENATE Art Grant, and the Rafael Ramos García International Photography Prize.
In 2021 he received the First Prize in the Lírica al Margen call in Madrid, and in 2023 he was awarded the VEGAP Prize for his project Poetics for the Memory of a Foreign War, later incorporated into the collection of the Colegio de España in Paris. His work is also held in collections such as the Calvià City Council.
Alongside his artistic practice, Auria has developed a strong engagement with education, research, and curatorial projects. He currently serves as Vice-Director of the EASD Antonio Faílde in Ourense, where he teaches photography. He is also the founder and former editor of Caleidoscópica, a publication focused on photographic theory and contemporary image practices.
His academic background includes studies in Artistic Photography, Cultural Management, and Art History, as well as professional training in music performance. This interdisciplinary formation underpins a practice that moves between different media while maintaining a consistent conceptual framework.