The Inundart visual arts festival celebrates its 20th anniversary with a nod to women.

The Inundart contemporary visual arts festival kicks off its twentieth edition this Friday in Girona, establishing itself as a social and activist festival, with a significant emphasis this year on female-focused projects.

This weekend, the event, which will take place in various open-air spaces throughout the city, such as La Rambla, the Punt de Trobada, and the Voltes d'en Rosès, will bring together 24 artists, who will be protagonists of 22 actions. The epicenter will be the Casa de la Cultura, which will bring together the participating artists in a collective exhibition, open to the public until the end of June.

An audiovisual installation reconstructs the universe of the trementinaires, the women who a century ago traveled the Pyrenees selling medicinal herbs.

Among the names sensitive to feminism, the artist Joana Casa Poves stands out, with a proposal that combines photography, collage, and video and allows for the construction of a visual narrative about the frustration and struggle of several generations of women to achieve a more just and egalitarian society.

To this end, the project proposes a dialogue between women who lived in 1940s Spain and those who live today, connecting them through the languages ​​unique to each era: black and white photos, digital memes, and images shared on social media. The project, the festival explains, aims to "challenge the viewer about the weight of collective memory, gender roles, and the persistence of inequalities."

This will by no means be the only action with a female perspective. Artists Neus Solà and Marta Cardellach present an audiovisual installation that allows us to reconstruct the world of the trementinaires , the women who a century ago traveled the Pyrenees selling medicinal herbs.

The Marubo company, in its theatrical show (a) Real, guided by the voices of five women in situations of social and family vulnerability, proposes a sensitive and immersive journey that challenges the spectator, who becomes an active protagonist of the narrative.

Artist George Ramos challenges the viewer with stories of men who have suffered sexual abuse.

Another project, the result of a collaboration between the Pla de Palau civic center, the Miradas Compartidas collective, and Inundart, brings together a group of women who, together with artist Ángeles Gordillo, have created an installation that gives voice to personal experiences during menopause, the transition period between the fertile and non-reproductive states. The public will find letters written by the participants, in which they express their emotions and doubts about a stage of life that is often silenced.

Aside from these female-themed offerings, the festival has also become a scourge of society over the years. To raise awareness about gender-based violence, George Ramos gives voice this year to the stories of men who have been victims of sexual abuse. The artist incorporates his own testimony, which he experienced at just 14 years old, into his work, created with digital photographs.

The show 'Memory of Rice in the Trinxers', by Jose Larrossa, aims to highlight the loss of bomba rice cultivation in Sa Poble (Balearic Islands) at the same time as mass tourism has grown, a fact that has contributed to the progressive abandonment of the primary sector.

Technology, artificial intelligence, and immersive installations are prominent in some of the proposals, such as Àlex Rigol's interactive installation, which invites participants to explore the exterior of a metal cube following a series of instructions until they reach its interior, where a riddle will be revealed.

Read also A tour of 20th-century Catalan art in Girona, guided by the Bassat collection. Silvia Oller

In 'Cartografies Sonores', Guillem Fàbrega and Alex Gorgorió present a real-time video projection and pixel mapping installation that transforms music into a visual representation of Girona's urban landscape.