Cristina Babiloni’s first solo exhibition with Opera Gallery Madrid marked a defining moment in the evolution of her practice, situating the Castellón-born artist deeply within an expanding international framework. Her exhibition, titled Ecos de Vida, brought together paintings and sculptural works that distilled her longstanding engagement with the Mediterranean landscape into immersive environments. Drawing on burlap, sand, ceramics and pigment, Babiloni constructed surfaces shaped by erosion and tidal movement, extending her ongoing artistic dialogue with painting and sculpture. At this pivotal stage in her career, what did this milestone represent for her practice?
This is your first solo exhibition with Opera Gallery following the announcement of your global representation. What does this milestone mean for you at this stage of your practice?
Echoes of Life is my first solo exhibition in Madrid with Opera Gallery. It coincides with a very special moment in my career, as I am also currently exhibiting at the Bancaja Foundation in Valencia.For me, this exhibition represents an opportunity for growth: placing my work within an international context and opening new paths for collaboration and future projection.
The exhibition title ‘Ecos de Vida’ suggests echoes or reverberations of life. Could you talk about what this title means to you and how it relates to the work on display?
Echoes of Life refers to life, memory, nature, and human experience. These are presented as traces, emotions, vital cycles, or fragments of lived experience, reinforcing the idea that life leaves marks that endure.What is visible often points to what is invisible or inward.The exhibition evokes the rhythms of nature, its silences, and its capacity to resonate emotionally with viewers who observe it in a reflective way.
You were born in Castellón de la Plana and still live and work there. Does your relationship with the natural world, particularly the ocean and marine life that’s so central to this exhibition, stem from your connection to that place?
The Mediterranean, beyond being my natural geographical reference, holds a strong emotional and symbolic component within my artistic process. It is a territory associated with light, climate, a slower rhythm, and a connection to nature that is intrinsic to Valencian culture. The sea acts as both a root and a starting point for my creative philosophy.The sea becomes a metaphor for life, introspection, and the balance between the human and the natural.
In your works, you employ a variety of materials such as burlap, sand, acrylic paint, cardboard, ceramics, and methacrylate to construct imagined marine ecosystems. How do you decide which materials to use, and what do these choices bring to your imagined marine ecosystems?
The wide variety of materials I use is an essential part of both my inspiration and the meaning of the work.They are materials drawn from my own creative process; there is a circularity to them, and many are used not only as supports or color, but as structural and expressive elements within the piece. They carry symbolism that refers to life in constant transformation.The layering of matter and the collage of materials create a sense of process, time, and change, connecting with nature in a deeply sensory way.
Your latest series explores terrestrial landscapes; volcanoes, soil, and raw geological matter, creating new forms that bridge land and sea. Can you talk about how these different natural elements coexist in your work?
My current exhibition at the Bancaja Foundation in Valencia is conceived as a sensory journey that invites the viewer to enter an emotional and introspective territory through landscape. Land and sea function as dream and wakefulness, reality and illusion, transitional spaces where both merge and coexist.
You blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture in your work. How do you approach this relationship between the two disciplines, and what does working across both allow you to express?
I have always felt that painting and sculpture are complementary languages. In Echoes of Life, this dialogue becomes especially conscious: I approach painting through matter, relief, and gesture, almost as if I were modeling it, while sculpture maintains a very direct relationship with surface, skin, and color - elements traditionally associated with painting. My creative process begins with a physical need to build the work, allowing the materials to set the rhythm and creating a hybrid space where both disciplines nourish each other. This crossover invites the viewer into a more sensory and immersive experience, in which the work is perceived not only visually but also bodily and emotionally.
A lot of your signature themes include elemental materials, a gestural and tactile process, and a sense of time. Could you elaborate on how these themes come together in your practice?
These are elements that intertwine to give meaning to the work.Sand, ceramics, burlap, and pigments all contain memory. They form a language that refers to origin, landscape, and natural processes, already carrying a symbolic and physical weight that gives character to the work. My relationship with the work is bodily: I touch, press, tear, and layer. The gesture does not seek a preconceived image; it emerges from a dialogue with the material. In this way, making becomes an almost intuitive experience, guided more by the hand and the body than by reason.The sense of time appears as a natural consequence of this way of working. Layers, sediments, gestural traces, and the aging of materials evoke slow processes similar to geological or marine ones.Thus, matter, gesture, and time merge to create an intermediate space, between land and sea, between the conscious and the unconscious, where the work unfolds as a sensory journey open to the viewer’s inner experience.
Your surfaces suggest sedimentation, erosion, and other natural forces, processes of transformation and creation happening over time. Do these ideas of natural change and renewal carry through into the meaning of the finished work itself?
Absolutely. My visual language invites reflection on memory, the passage of time, and the capacity of matter to transform and regenerate itself.Sedimentation, erosion, and geological processes function both as formal devices and as metaphors for time. In the finished work, the viewer perceives layers, traces, and tensions that suggest the material has been subjected to external forces, as in nature itself. This transforms the artwork into the visible result of a process rather than a static object.The notion of renewal is present in the idea that wear and erosion do not imply destruction, but reconfiguration. The meaning of the work is therefore linked to a cyclical vision of time, where change is constant and productive.
Your work is described as channelling “the rhythms and transformations of the natural world, an ecosystem in perpetual motion.” How do you capture that sense of constant movement and change within a painting or sculpture which itself does not move?
In my creative process, I aim for surfaces to emerge from multiple successive actions, as if time itself were embedded in the material. This allows the viewer to perceive the work as something that has already changed and could continue to change.Layers, accumulations, and veils generate the sensation of an ongoing process. Texture and gesture are fundamental, as they imply movement even when it exists only by suggestion. The eye moves across the work following internal rhythms, activating a dynamic experience.The composition remains open, with elements that seem to expand or contract within the pictorial or sculptural space, reinforcing the idea of a living, mutable ecosystem.Movement ultimately exists in the viewer’s experience, as they mentally reconstruct the natural processes that gave rise to the work.
You regularly collaborate with foundations and social initiatives, reflecting your commitment to sustainability and environmental consciousness. How does this activism connect to the work you make in the studio?
My commitment to sustainability is first reflected in an ethical relationship with materials and processes. Attention to matter, time, and transformation aligns directly with ecological values: respect for natural cycles, awareness of human impact, and a rejection of immediacy and disposability. My creative philosophy seeks to introduce a sense of responsibility and meaning into the work. Eroded surfaces, processes of accumulation, and signs of wear speak not only of nature in abstract terms, but also of the fragility of ecosystems and the need to protect them.The studio is not an isolated space, but a node of connection between artistic creation, collective awareness, and social action. In this way, my work and my philosophy continually reinforce one another, affirming a vision of art as a tool for awareness and transformation.
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