The Cervantes Institute rewritesDon Quixote from an ecological, feminist and dystopian perspective through artificial intelligence. This is its new exhibition, Aeolia, by the artist from Burgos, Solimán López, which opened last Wednesday, November 27.
The exhibition brings together ten works by the artist himself, with audiovisual installations, AI-generated animations and a central piece with which the public can interact. It seeks to reinterpret the Spanish classic from a contemporary perspective.
It can be visited at the Instituto Cervantes in Madrid (Calle Alcalá, 49) until March 8, 2026, with free admission until full capacity is reached. It is part of the cycle Paisajes intangibles, a new space dedicated to artistic, technological and linguistic experimentation that has been installed in the former banking area of the same building.
“In a place on the net”.
The main work of Aeolia is an interactive sculpture that welcomes visitors in the lobby of the Cervantine headquarters. It has been trained from the original text of Don Quixote, other writings by Cervantes and an extensive bibliography and invites the public to participate in the creation of new stories. According to Roberta Bosco, the curator of the exhibition, it turns viewers into “catalysts of the creative process.”
It aims to cover the 400 years that have passed since the publication of Don Quixote, modifying the original text through AI and introducing current themes. For example, sociology, cybernetics, sustainability, the environment, gender equality, civil disobedience and pacifism are addressed.
Solimán Pérez shows how society and the passage of time can influence works of art. Instead of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, in the exhibition you can read La Performance Perpetua del HidalgoDigital, with a new beginning to Cervantes’ work: “In a place on the net, whose domain I don’t want to remember, there lived today a man of ancient cryptography, skinny computer and algorithm runner …”
The windmills of Campo de Criptana
The connection with the original work is also present in Aeolia through the landscape, as the text autogenerator transforms the energy of the windmills of Campo de riptana (Ciudad Real) into language.
All the variants of Don Quixote generated during the exhibition will be collected in a digital artist’s book, which can be read from the web and will allow the work to be preserved for millennia.
Short films, animations and visual maps
In addition to the central work, Aeolia includes more pieces, such as an animated digital sculpture that shows the geographical positions of more than 3,000 wind turbines in Castilla la Mancha. The environmental vision is also shown through the image of the Iberian imperial eagle, a species of this environment. It is in danger of extinction in the Iberian Peninsula and is one of the species most affected by wind farms.
Other works in the exhibition are the short film “Aeoliaxis de un viento” about how Solimán López has captured the air of the lands of La Mancha, a video animation of an engraving of Chapter VIII of Don Quixote and an AI-generated dialogue that recreates the voice of Cervantes.