BIOGRAPHY, XAVI BOU (BARCELONA, 1979)
Xavi Bou’s work explores the representation of animal movement through the technique of digital chronophotography, a practice situated at the intersection of art and science.
His interest in nature began in childhood, during long walks through the Llobregat Delta with his grandfather, who passed on his love for birds and the environment. However, that landscape was marked by a striking contrast: in the late 1980s, it was one of the most industrialized and polluted regions in Europe. Textile factories discharged their waste directly into the river, and the beach they used to visit was among the most degraded on the Mediterranean coast. That early experience, a nature deeply scarred by unchecked development, shaped in him an environmental awareness that was early and unsentimental, and that has strongly influenced his worldview: a need to find, in the beauty and astonishing complexity of the natural world, a motivating force for building a more sustainable relationship with the planet.
Trained in geology and photography, Bou has developed the project *Ornitografías* since 2012, making visible the choreographies of birds in flight. This series has had wide international resonance, featured in general and specialized media as well as scientific and cultural publications. It has helped position the project in a hybrid context between art, science, and environmental communication. *Ornitografías* has led to books, exhibitions, and new projects such as *Fluctus* and *Entomografías*.
His work has been exhibited in contemporary art centers, international photography festivals, and natural science museums, bridging two realms that rarely interact: the poetic sensitivity of art and the explanatory rigour of science. In that space, his work proposes new modes of perception that invite us to rethink our relationship with nature.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My artistic practice begins with a question I consider urgent:
How do we look at animals?
What does our way of representing them reveal about our relationship with them and, ultimately, about the way we inhabit the world?
In a time when ecological crisis and technological acceleration have radically transformed our perception of nature, I propose a visual experience that does not offer answers but instead opens questions.
Through a contemporary technique of chronophotography, developed within my practice, gathering sequences of animal movement and assembling them into a single image, I aim to reveal invisible structures: natural choreographies, flight patterns, and trajectories that escape ordinary sight. These images do not freeze a moment, but condense an expanded temporality: a way of seeing time as a fluid, non-linear phenomenon.
My work is situated in the tradition of cabinets of curiosities, not as an accumulation of rarities, but as a device for visual inquiry. In these contemporary cabinets, the boundaries between art and science dissolve. The natural world no longer appears as an object of control or taxonomic study, but as a sensitive territory where everything is interconnected.
From Ornitografías to Entomografías and Fluctus, the core of my work is a call to perceptual empathy: inviting the viewer to look with new eyes, to see animals not as symbols, study subjects, or exotic creatures, but as fellow beings with whom we share a story, a planet, and a common destiny.
My artistic practice is a way to explore how images can expand perception, interrupt the logic of the instantaneous, and restore a deeper, more poetic, and more respectful relationship with the rhythms of the living.
In a time when we urgently need to rethink our relationship with nature, art has the power to imagine new ways of seeing and feeling.
My work aspires to be one of those ways: a window into invisible worlds, a visual metaphor of interdependence, an invitation to look beyond the human.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
> Group show, Animal Model: 200 Years of Photography, LUMA / Les Rencontres d’Arles, France, 2026
> Group show, 100 Foto per Ereditare il Mondo, MUDEC – Museo delle Culture, Milan, Italy, 2026
> Group show, Bird’s-Eye Views, Museum Sinclair-Haus, Germany, 2026
> Solo show, La Mezzanina, Senda Gallery, Barcelona, Spain, 2026
> Solo show, Dennos Museum Center, Traverse City, USA, 2026
> Solo show, Foster/White Gallery, Seattle, USA, 2025
> Solo show, Galería Ethra, Mexico, 2025
> Group show, WHY LOOK AT ANIMALS?, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece, 2025
> Group show, The High Life, Florida, USA, 2025
> Solo show, PhotoVogue, Milan, Italy, 2025
> Solo show, ARCO Art Fair with Galería Senda, Madrid, Spain, 2025
> Solo show, Bordeaux Museum of Science and Nature, France, 2024
> Solo show, Blue Sky, The Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts, Portland, USA, 2024
> Solo show, Senda Gallery, Barcelona, Spain, 2024
> Group show, Fotografia Europea Festival, Italy, 2024
> Solo show, Mathematikum, Gießen, Germany, 2024
> Screening, Loop Video Art Fair, Barcelona, Spain, 2023
> Group show, Cervells, CCCB, Barcelona, Spain, 2022
> Solo show, Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, The Cardinal Gallery, Toronto, Canada, 2022
> Group show, Traces, MoMath, New York, USA, 2022
> Solo show, La Chambre, Strasbourg, France, 2022
> Solo show, CosmoCaixa, Barcelona, Spain, 2021
> Solo show, Phyletisches Museum, Jena, Germany, 2020
> Solo show, Centro Fotográfico Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Oaxaca, Mexico, 2019
> Solo show, FineArt Igualada, Spain, 2018
> Solo show, Mijas Contemporary Art Centre, Spain, 2017
> Group show, Leonardo, or the Dream of Flying, Museum TwentseWelle, The Netherlands, 2017
> Group show, Freedom, Aperture Foundation, New York, USA, 2017
SELECTED WEBSITES
> National Geographic Spain
> National Geographic
> Audubon Society
> Sierra Club
> Scientific American
> GEO Germany
> National Geographic | US
> Wired | US
> Lense | France
> il Post | Italy
> Verne. El país | Spain
> National Geographic | Norway
> Pixelistes | France
> The culture trip
> Vice. The creators project | Spain
> Quartz | US
> Gestalten | Germany
> Golem 13 | France
> Up Worthy | US
> Juxtapoz | US
> Que sabes de | Spain
> Pausa periódico digital | Argentina
> Cnn style | US
> Booooooom | Canada
> D republica | Italy
> Hyperallergic | US
> Peta pixel | US
> Swiss Miss | Switzerland
> This is Colossal | US
> De Volkskrant | Netherlands
> Metal | Spain
> The guardian | UK
> Esquire | Russia
> Gizmodo | Japan
> Jiemian | China
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
> National Geographic Spain, January 2026
> De la Repubblica, July 2025
>The Observer, December 2024
> Imagine 5, September 2024
> SZ magazine, 2024
> Geo magazine, June 2024
> National Geographic, April 2024
> Science Notes Magazine, March 2024
> BBC Science Focus, January 2024
> De Morgen, April 2023
> Focus Magazine, December 2022
> Der Spiegel, December 2022
> The Observer, October 2022
> Euronews, August 2022
> Wonderground Journal, June 2022
> De Morgen, April 2022
> WWF magazine, August 2021
> Birdlife magazine, Spring 2021
> Natur Magazine, Germany , April 2021
> Audubon Society magazine Spring 2021
> Granta Magazine , November 2020
> Sierra Club Magazine , September 2020
> Der Greif Spring summer 2018
> 212 Magazine, Worldwide, Spring 2018
> Fotomagazin, Deutschland, May 2018
> Bild om Sonntag, Deutschland, April 2018
> National Geographic USA, January 2018
> Geo Russia, January 2017
> National Geographic Spain, April 2017
> Geo Deutschland, January 2017
> Greenpeace Magazine Alemania, Octubre 2016
> The Guardian UK November 2016
> Sonntag Alemania, October 2016
> Volkskrant Holanda, November 2016
> The Spiegel Alemania, November 2016
> De morgen, Belgium, Octubre 2016
> Politiken, Denmark December 2016
TALKS AND WORKSHOPS
> Talk, Mil anys de cels, Cripta Gaudí, 2025
> Talk, Converses Numèric, Agullana, 2025
> Talk, GDT Photo Festival, Lünen, Germany. 2023
> Talk, El Medol, Contemporary art center, Tarragona, 2023
> Talk, Bienal Ciutat i Ciencia, Barcelona, 2023
> Talk, Delta birding Festival, Catalonia, 2022
> Talk, “Caixaforum” Lleida, Catalonia, 2021
> Talk, “Caixaforum” Girona, Catalonia, 2021
> Talk, “Caixaforum” Palma de Mallorca, Spain 2021
> Talk, “Caixaforum” Tarragona, Catalonia 2021
> Talk, “Cosmocaixa”, Barcelona, Catalonia, 2021
> Talk, “E.T. Fest” webinar, 2021
> Talk “Kant photo festival”, online, 2021
> Talk “Birdlife Rare Bird Club” online event, 2021
> Talk, TEDx, Konstanz University, online, 2020
> Talk, “Birdlife Flyway” webinar, 2020
> Talk “Montphoto photo festival”, Lloret de Mar, Spain 2019
> Workshop, “Centro fotografico Alvarez Bravo”, Oaxaca, México, 2019
> Workshop, IDEP photography school, Catalonia, 2019
> Talk “FIO Ornithology Fair”, Extremadura, Spain 2018
> Talk, “Utopia market” Art fair, Catalonia, 2018
> Workshop, IDEP photography school, Catalonia 2017
> Talk, “El Observatorio” photography School, Catalonia, 2015
COLLECTIONS
> Whitworth University, Lied Art Center
> Fundació Carmen & Lluís Bassat, Catalonia
> Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain, Alsace, France.
> Museum of American Bird Art at Mass Audubon, Massachusetts, USA.
> Dawn Art Collection, London, UK.
> Fundació Vila Casas, Catalonia.
> University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics permanent art collection, USA.
> Contemporary art Center, Mijas, Spain.
> Private collectors around 27 countries.