Lidia Benavides (Madrid, 1971), Doctor in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid, is focusing her work on investigating into light as visual language via different series of photographs and video.

If, in the series Luz natural / luz artificial from 1998, the artist resorted to modeling of beams, reflections and refractions in inlets of daylight and sources of electrical light, in Infrarrojo-ultravioleta from 2000, displayed in PhotoEspaña ´00, Lidia Benavides inquired into the wavelengths of light that are invisible to the human eye, exploring high temperatures with infrared film in opposition to the distant compositions transmitted by means of invisible ultraviolet light. "This series is called Infrarrojo-ultravioleta because the arc of its visibility runs from the transparency of the inscrutable to the twinkling of phosphorescence. Its aim is to see it itself and to get us to see the invisible beings who inhabit light, beyond the experience of discovering them, tattooing them, sculpting the dazzling masks which will transfer their existence to our possibilities of perception. Denuding their ethereal bodies and redressing them in new suits so that the ambushed secret is made palpable to the look," comments Mariano Navarro in the catalogue containing that series.

2002 saw the arrival of the series Filtros, Antídotos and Zumo celeste, in which the coding shows its subtlety in patinas and volumes of pure pictorial composition abounding in the paradox of an abstract photography due to the removal of reality, of a language of self-referential abstraction. "In these latest photographs Lidia Benavides has gone straight to the basis of photography, to light... Lidia Benavides enters with these image into the select list of artists who base themselves on light for their creation. Into the small group of photographers which decide to make abstraction into a language and a subject of photography. Essentialist artists, who seek purity beyond forms and the perception of the senses," says Rosa Olivares.

In Infraleve y Neoprofuso, from 2003, the artist takes this language to its extremes; the Infraleve tries to reduce light to its most ethereal essence, stripping it as much as possible of any other suggestions that are not its actual nature, and in Neoprofuso the modulation of this is densified to the most complex extremes, creating strange architectures.

From 2004 is the series Nero, incandescent sculpture almost in black and white. Cosmorama and Cinerea, separate series of photographs and video from 2004, were presented in an individual exhibition in Estiarte and in the Gallery's stand in ParisPhoto04, along with her latest photos and light boxes from the series Ventura, presented by Estiarte in ARCO05. Cosmorama is the optical artifice which serves to see objects enlarged by means of a camera obscura, and is the title of these two series of photographs, a photoinstallation and a video in DVD. On the one hand, Cinérea, the title for the series of new photos in different formats which, signed in 2004 in an edition of 5 copies, show a very subtle treatment of light particles covering patinas, in order to achieve an infinite gradation of color in a micro-interval of photons of lunar ash. On the other hand, the series Cosmorama consists of the photographs Fotosfera, Fosfeno and Hexagrama boreal in which combustions of light are produced in complex combinations of spaces, volumes and colors filtered by means of optical resources. Meanwhile, Vídeocosmorama, is the title of the video in DVD format which introduces the time factor for a kind of sublimation of different substances belonging to the same semantic field of Lidia Benavides' discourse on photographic abstraction.

The series Postdamer Platz, consisting of photographs and light boxes, was presented in ParisPhoto05 and ARCO06, and in them the view over the city of Berlin is distorted by the decomposition of light reflected in its facades. The series with the title Watching People, also photographs and light boxes from 2006, took part in the Spanish selection for the Altadis Award 06 and are an approach to people in the streets of the city of Chicago filtered by some contorting and very pictorial plastic.

Similarly, the artist develops different projects on video installation with the generic title of XBL. So, Xbl-11 (2001) is designed as a cubicle in which the viewer has to relax laying down in order to view a work which emanates the entire spectrum of color in digital sequences starting from abstract slides taken over to video. In Xbl-7 (2001) the installation is extended to a large space in the open air, whose night-time functioning reached a large number of viewers in the rave of Mdf ´01. Xbl-3/RGB (2004), exhibited in ARCO´04, is designed as a triptych in three liquid crystal screens which decompose the color-light into its components of red, green and blue in order to show a series of light events supported by structures of ice, crystal and bioluminescent water, amplifying the pleasure of looking from a particular poetics of crystallization. This piece was selected for the exhibition Tangentes al paisaje, curated by Chema de Francisco on commission from the Rodríguez Acosta Foundation and Granada City Hall in 2006. Her work for video produced between 2005 and 2006 has the dual title Galactóforo-White Dream in Wannsee and introduces the experience of flowing floating in liquids, rhythms and digital distortions of different whites via the flight and swimming of a jellyfish.

Her most recent work to date is titled The Sun Oven and has been produced during 2007 in the Solar Platform of Almería as part of a work project based on investigation into solar energy. It is going to be presented in its entirety in Galería Estiarte de Madrid next 31 January 2008 and consists of a series of photographs, light boxes and video. "The Solar Platform of Almería has various lines of investigation open on different projects started up by other German and Spanish investigation teams. Solar ovens, heliostats, purifying plants, prototypes of energy saving buildings, food dehydrators or the incredible solar concentration tower have allowed me to bring to my world an enormous world of plastic resources constructed by light and aims to give an idea of the immense potential of the many different applications of solar energy," says Lidia Benavides.

Her work was selected in Circuits of Plastic Arts and Photography in its 1999 edition, which traveled the cities of Stuttgart, Munich and Berlin. It was selected in Generation 2005 by Caja Madrid, in the Extraordinary Award for Photography of the AENA Foundation in 2005, in the I Biennial of ONCE in 2006, in the selection of the Altadis Award 2006 and in the exhibition Supraficciones organized by the La Caixa Foundation in 2007. In 2006 her work was chosen by Rosa Olivares in the book 100 Fotógrafos Españoles, published by Exit. She is currently represented by Galería Estiarte de Madrid. Her work is included in the collections of Caja Burgos, Circa XXI Collection of Pilar Citoler, Munich Re Collection, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as in the National Library of Spain and in the Spanish Parliament. Notable among the publications devoted to her work are texts from the curators and critics Mariano Navarro, Rosa Olivares, Francisco Carpio, Oscar Alonso Molina, Chema de Francisco, Creixell Espiña and Ricardo Echevarría.