The Important Bigwigs was an artistic action that unfolded over several months in the form of a playful, yet critical, adoption campaign: the adoption of “important” men and women, with as many quotation marks as necessary. The project had a clearly defined deadline, the month of June and the night of the San Xoán bonfire.

The idea was simple and bold: any piece that didn’t find someone willing to adopt it would be thrown into the fire, based on the conceptual provocation that if a work of art fails to move or captivate anyone, perhaps it is not art at all, just dry firewood. And indeed, the round wooden panels used as supports for the portraits were firewood. But once they received someone’s attention or affection, they became something valuable, thereby revealing, and questioning, the systems of value and perception that define what we consider art, or important.

The series portrayed archetypal, satirical, and instantly recognizable profiles: a catalogue as hilarious as it was critical, where historical figures such as Diogenes Laërtius, little Nero, or Champollion coexisted with other characters like the National Poet, the Great Entrepreneur, or the Knight of Human Stupidity. Over six months, these 45 characters traveled through various exhibition spaces across Galicia, until the night of June 23rd. That evening, under the symbolic flames of San Xoán, some of the pieces were finally burned.

This project holds deep personal meaning for me. It emerged from a period of intense mourning, and having the agency to decide how something ends  was profoundly liberating. The act of burning had been an essential part of the creative process from the very beginning. The final event took place in an intimate setting, accompanied by neighbors from the village of Mallas, in a shared gesture that blended rural ceremony, ephemeral art, and collective ritual. For me, it was a deeply cathartic experience.

Because, in the end, there is a kind of dignity, and even a sense of honor, in knowing when something has run its course, and allowing it to come to an end.