Francisco Contreras, otherwise known as Niño de Elche (b. 1985), is an ex-flamenco artist whose artistic work combines flamenco, free improvisation, krautrock, electro-acoustic, and contemporary music, along with poetry, performance, dance, and theater. 

He has recorded many albums, among them, Sí, a Miguel Hernández, Voces del Extremo (chosen as the best album of 2015 by several Spanish media outlets), Antología del Cante Flamenco Heterodoxo, Colombiana, Fuerza nueva (with the Granada band Los Planetas), and the recent double LP La distancia entre el barro y la electrónica, siete diferencias valderomarianas, about the sound archive of artist José Val del Omar. He has published three books: No comparto los postres, Morbo legítimo, and In memoriam. Posesiones de un exflamenco. Among his many collaborative projects are the shows “Raverdial” and “En el nombre de,” developed together with the audiovisual duo Los Voluble for the Sónar Festival in 2015 and 2017, as well as “Vaconbacon, cantar las fuerzas,” with the collective Bulos y Tanguerías in the year 2011. He has collaborated with artists including Israel Galván, Angélica Liddell, María Muñoz, and C.Tangana, among others. He was one of the Spanish artists invited to participate in Documenta 14 (2017) in Kassel and Athens, showing the proposal “La farsa monea,” developed with artists Pedro G. Romero and Israel Galván. He played the leading role in director Sergi Cameron’s film Niños somos todos, which was shown at various film festivals dedicated to European documentary cinema. 

His work Invisible Auto Sacramental: A Sonic Representation from Val del Omar was commissioned for the collection of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and shown there on October 7, 2020–November 29, 2021.

Image credits: Óscar Fernández Orengo