María Molina Peiró

On a planet in the solar system located at the right distance from the sun to support life, a remote robot explores the land with seven scientific cameras. With its ultraviolet camera the robot spots an orange beam of light burst across the deep purple sky. Somewhere in the distance there is an explosion. Perhaps it was a meteorite.

Light years, or perhaps only a few kilometres away, Fernando, an 80-year-old man, walks through the Alto de la Mesa neighbourhood in Río Tinto. A family of gypsies play rumba at full volume from a car, while one of the residents watches Fernando through his net curtains.

What does Fernando do every day as he sneaks through the gap in the valley that separates the residential area from the privately owned mine?

Como todo mortal depicts the strange symbiosis and tensions in a landscape that fluctuates between the limits of reality and imagination, scientific exploration and capitalist exploitation, and the abstraction of the universe and everyday reality. A place where science fiction is interwoven with folklore and tales as profound, vivid and rich as the earth itself.

BIO

María Molina Peiró is an audiovisual artist, researcher and filmmaker whose work lies at the intersection between cinema and contemporary art. Among other topics, her projects explore the complicated relationship between history, technology and nature. Her installations and films have been shown around the world and at contemporary art centres and film festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), MACBA Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (Barcelona), BFI London Film Festival, Louvre Museum (Paris), Washington National Gallery of Art, MMCA National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul), Hong-Gah Museum (Taipei), Seville European Film Festival, and the Science Museum in London, among many more. María studied at the University of Fine Arts (Seville), School of Visual Arts (New York) and completed a Master’s in Film (cum laude) at the Netherlands Film Academy. 

Her work has received grants and awards including the AHK award (Amsterdam University of the Arts), the Audiovisual Creation Award by La Casa Encendida, 3PD (Amsterdam Fonds Voor de Kunst), and Mondriaan Funds, to name a few. In addition to her artistic projects, Molina Peiró has worked as a lecturer in the Master of Film at the Netherlands Film Academy and has curated cinema programmes at Instituto Cervantes (The Netherlands).  Her films are distributed and form part of art film collections that include the EYE Film Museum, LIMA Collection, HAMACA, and Cinesud. ​

RESIDENCY

María Molina Peiró is one of the four selected artists-in-residence for audiovisual projects that are currently underway, as part of the joint programme by Cineteca film archive and Matadero Madrid's Centre for Artists in Residence.