The Time Out Cultura Awards celebrate the most outstanding artistic proposals of the year in Madrid

Time Out Madrid held the second edition of its Culture Awards at the Palacio de la Prensa in Madrid. The gala, hosted by the artist Mara Jiménez, was attended by more than 350 people, including the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, and representatives of the main institutions of the community. They all enjoyed the performances of Folkorp, Jimena Amarillo and the Rastro Live collective. 

Gorka Elorrieta, editorial director of Time Out Madrid, said: ‘For yet another year, we recognise and celebrate the enormous talent and the vast and fertile cultural programme that unfolds throughout the city, whether it is presented in internationally renowned institutions or foundations, in a new gallery, on any of our stages, in cinemas or on the sofa in your home through a book. They are proposals, personal names or collectives that have surprised, inspired and moved us over the last few months in Madrid. Choosing three nominees per category was already a difficult, almost impossible task. That's why this gala is just a pretext to applaud and support on a physical level a special portion of everything that Time Out, through our website and social networks, aims to disseminate, defend and promote on a daily basis’. 

The Time Out Madrid 2024 Culture Awards kicked off with the award to the Best Opening, which recognised the work of La Casa de la Arquitectura in the dissemination and positioning of this discipline. The recognition encompasses both its physical headquarters in the Arquería de Nuevos Ministerios and its virtual project ES_ARQ. The finalists in this category were Nave 10 Matadero and 95 Art Gallery. 

The second award of the night was for Best Exhibition, which went to ‘The Intimate Realism of Isabel Quintanilla’, the first monographic show that the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum has dedicated to a Spanish artist. The finalist exhibitions in this category were ‘Narratives of emancipation, desire and intimacy’ by Erwin Olaf of PHotoESPAÑA and ‘Nothing will be left of all this’, by the Paco Graco collective. 

The award for Best Sociocultural Initiative went to Debajo del Sombrero, a national platform for the creation, research and promotion of artists with intellectual disabilities. The finalist projects were Acción por la Música and Red de Espacios Culturales en Apoyo a Situaciones de Emergencia (TEJA). 

The Time Out Madrid 2024 Culture Awards gala continued with the award for Best Show: the multi-award-winning ‘Mont Ventoux’, by the Kor'sia collective. The finalists in this category were Casting Lear, by Andrea Jiménez and Forever, by the company Kulunka. 

The halfway point of the gala was dedicated to the Best Event or Festival. The jury praised the work of She Makes Noise, which is celebrating its first decade of life by making women and non-binary people visible in electronic music and the audiovisual sector. The finalist projects in this category were Flipas. Laboratorio de Culturas Urbanas and Festival de las Ideas. 

After a performance by the band Folkorp, the dance-theatre company that reinterprets folklore from a feminist perspective, the gala continued with the award for Best Emerging Artist, which went to Alcalá Norte, a band that has had a meteoric rise on the Madrid music scene. The finalists in this category were Alberto Cortés and the Mucha Muchacha collective. 

The most surprising proposals took centre stage with the award for Best Innovative Project, which recognised the surprising proposal of the Círculo de Bellas Artes to transform its emblematic Ballroom into a Climatic Refuge with more than 300 floors where one can enjoy a pleasant temperature, rest, read or work. The installations and furniture were designed by the Basurama collective in collaboration with Germinando. The finalists in this category were Hyper House and Festival Proyector. 

The evening continued with the announcement of the award for Best Work. The jury selected the novel ‘El Descontento’ as the winner in this category. The debut novel by Beatriz Serrano, recent finalist for the Planeta Prize with her second novel, tackles with acid humour some of the ills of today's society and reflects on personal and work-related crises. The finalists were the LP ‘No hay un Dios’ by Pipiolas, and the film ‘Volveréis’, by Jonás Trueba. 

The penultimate prize of the day went to the Best Creator with the award given to the artist Teresa Solar Abboud, who explores the body, borders and language in her large-format sculptures. The finalist creators were the company Los Bárbaros and the national urban art referent SUSO33. 

The gala was rounded off with the presentation of the Time Out Madrid Award, which recognises the professional career of a creator, project or collective that has spent most of its career in the city. The Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, presented the award to the iconic Madrid band Los Punsetes. 

The artists and collectives recognised in this second edition of the Time Out Cultura de Madrid Awards were selected by a jury made up of editors and collaborators of the magazine - Isabel Gil, Irene Calvo, Álvaro Vicente and the editorial director, Gorka Elorrieta - as well as cultural representatives of the city: José Luis Romo (artistic director of Matadero Madrid), Pablo Berástegui (director of La Casa Encendida), Ainhoa Amestoy (artistic programmer at Teatros del Canal), Carolina Fábregas (director of Marketing at Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza) and Beatriz Pérez (director of Marketing and Communication at Leica Iberia). 

The Time Out Cultura de Madrid Awards were a celebration of the creative proposals that have most surprised people in the capital this past year. After the presentation of the awards, the more than 30 nominated artists and collectives, as well as the main cultural representatives of the city, enjoyed a party enlivened by the DJ collective Rastro Live, the gastronomy of Azotea Grupo and the projections of the MMMAD association, which promotes the exhibition, dissemination and thought around digital creation. 

The second edition of the Time Out Cultura de Barcelona Awards will take place on Monday 11 November, paying tribute to the most outstanding and influential creative proposals of the last year in Barcelona.