The Important Bigwigs was an artistic action unfolding over several months in the form of a campaign as playful as it was critical: the “adoption” of so-called important men and women—quotation marks included. The project had a precise deadline: June, on the night of San Xoán’s bonfire. The premise was simple yet forceful: any piece that failed to find someone willing to “adopt” it would be cast into the fire. The provocation lay in the idea that if a work of art does not move or captivate anyone, perhaps it is not art at all, but merely dry wood. And indeed, the round wooden panels serving as supports were firewood, yet once they received someone’s affection, they became something valuable, revealing (and questioning) the systems of value and perception that determine what we consider “art,” or “important.”
The series portrayed archetypal, satirical, and instantly recognizable profiles: a catalogue as humorous as it was biting, where historical figures such as Diogenes Laertius, a young Nero, or Champollion coexisted with invented characters like the National Poet, the Great Entrepreneur, or the Knight of Human Stupidity. For six months, these 45 characters traveled through different exhibition spaces in Galicia, until the night of June 23. That evening, beneath the symbolic flames of San Xoán, some of the works were indeed burned.
The project carries deep personal meaning for me. It emerged during a period of profound mourning, and the act of deciding how something would end was immensely liberating. Burning was not an afterthought but an essential part of the creative process from the beginning. The final event took place in an intimate setting, joined by the neighbors of Mallas, in a shared gesture that combined rural ceremony, ephemeral art, and collective ritual. For me, it was a profoundly cathartic experience. In the end, there is a certain dignity, perhaps even a form of honor, in knowing how to bring closure to what has already run its course.