About the Exhibition
Miguel Ángel Hernando was born in Madrid in 1965, and started to attend the Carabanchel Occupational Centre in 1989, where he worked in the ceramic and drawing workshops. Since 2011 he has attended the Debajo del Sombrero workshop in Matadero, Madrid. He attends twice a week, for four hours each time. Whenever someone new comes into the studio, he has a need without exception, to know their birth date and day of the week they were born. It is clear that its meaning hides something that fascinates him. In this way, Hernando shows the same urgency that we all feel to decipher the enigma of time in our lives. This interest in time also manifests in his eagerness to collect calendars and take them everywhere with him. They seem to be much more his property than the clothes that he wears. He can often be found asking others to bring him calendars – but they must be from the current year. He also has a daily ritual of singing the birthday song, which the whole studio has come to accept.
Hernando’s artwork features a world of tiny patterns and imagined animals and figures, arranged around the page. He loves to work in glitter gel pens to create his colourful works. It is believed that he draws things to be admired in heavy detail, but due to his limited speech, the studio cannot be exactly sure what he is drawing. Over time his drawings have increased in their delicacy and in the precision of his detail. Hernando has refined his style of a complicated network of streaks and dots that he uses as decoration on the figures and animals. No one knows just how much detail or ornamentation will feature in a piece of work. The studio views many of the pieces as extravagant works, but love the variation in what he creates. He often repeats the phrase “I paint very well”, so perhaps he feels we do not need to know anymore.
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Click here to watch a video of Jennifer in conversation with Artistic Director Luis Saez from Miguel’s studio in Madrid, and Gorka translated into English. BSL was recorded as part of the discussion. It is one hour long. (NOTE: If you click on the 4 arrows next to the word vimeo it will make it full screen)
Staff members from Debajo del Sombrero talked about the supported studio, its history, how it works with intellectually disabled artists and a little about Miguel's practice in particular. This studio is just one of many studios across Europe that supports disabled artists.