
Angel Otero in his Brooklyn studio, 2026. Photo: Javier Romero
The ‘Education Lab: Echoes’ accompanies the forthcoming Angel Otero exhibition, ‘Agua Salada,’ at Hauser & Wirth Somerset and explores how memory shapes who we are.
Developed in collaboration with Museum To You, a Somerset-based charity supporting older adults in care settings and our youth collective, Arthaus, the Education Lab centers on intergenerational exchange and collective creativity.
Community stories, short films and a collaborative memory wall will develop over the course of the exhibition from 2 May – 18 October 2026, alongside a soundscape co-produced with local care home residents, inspired by Angel Otero’s reflections on people, place and personal fragments.
Offering a shared community archive and an ongoing, multigenerational platform for dialogue, the Education Lab connects these local voices with international participants through a global digital open call that took place from 6 – 29 March 2026. In response to the work of Angel Otero, participants from across the global submitted a short film that reflected something meaningful to them—a memory, a place, a person, a feeling.
Inspired by Otero’s fascination with memory and the small pieces that tell a bigger story, selected films will become part of a fast-paced audio-visual experience in the Education Lab and shared across our digital platforms during the exhibition.
‘What is one thing you keep close?’— Angel Otero
About The Education Lab
The Education Lab is part of the gallery’s commitment to inclusive learning programs that instigate a dialogue between art, artists and diverse audiences. Located at our galleries in Downtown Los Angeles, Menorca and Somerset, as well as the Chillida Leku museum, each Education Lab is a collaboration with a local community group, school or university. The interactive spaces take their starting point from one of our international artists, facilitating a platform for discovery, discussion and additional resources.
About Angel Otero
Angel Otero makes his UK debut this spring, featuring a deeply personal body of work completed during an artist residency in Somerset. Known for his physically immersive approach to paint as material, Otero transforms the medium itself—scraping, layering and peeling dried oil paint to create richly textured compositions that hover between abstraction and figuration. Moving his studio practice from New York and Puerto Rico temporarily to Somerset, the residency provides Otero with the opportunity to continue his exploration of memory, place and meaning in the context of a new environment.
1 / 5