This doctoral thesis explores the interplay between walking and artistic creation, examining how the act of walking can facilitate a deeper, more creative engagement with the world. Authored by Nelson Aníbal Santos Avilés and directed by Antonio Alcaraz Mira at the Universitat Politècnica de València, the research blends theoretical reflection with artistic practice, situating walking as both method and subject within contemporary art. The investigation begins with a literature review on themes such as landscape, territory, dwelling, and disorientation, alongside the creative legacies of walking artists like Hamish Fulton, Francis Alÿs, and Richard Long, who treat the terrain itself as both medium and message. Moving beyond theoretical frameworks, the research is grounded in the artist’s own practice, through five fieldwork journeys on foot across Spain, China, and Ecuador, culminating in a body of work comprising drawings, paintings, and photographs. These visual artefacts emerge from travel diaries and directly reflect the experiential and aesthetic dimensions of traversed landscapes. Among the highlighted series are Camino de Santiago, El Color del Viento, Desorientaciones, and Entre el cielo y la tierra, alongside a site-specific intervention near Ecuador’s Cotopaxi volcano in homage to Long. This practice-based research, underpinned by a personal and embodied methodology, affirms that walking fosters creative clarity by stripping away clichés and reawakening the senses, while simultaneously exposing the body to the limits of physical endurance and vulnerability. Ultimately, the thesis contributes to the field of artistic research by demonstrating that walking is not merely locomotion but a profound aesthetic and epistemic strategy that reshapes perception and amplifies artistic intention.
Santos Avilés, N. A. (2020) El caminar y la creación artística. Una aportación desde la práctica: desorientaciones, el paisaje como lugar para ser pensado. PhD thesis. Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain.
