Guided Tour VII (Hondalea)

Art Initiative is screening Guided Tour VII (Hondalea) by the Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias on the big screen i the atrium during September 2026. Cristina Iglesias sculpture Aurora Borealis Star Dome (2026) is the seventh permanent work acquired for Princess Estelle’s Sculpture Park. 

Guided Tour is an established film series by Spanish sculptor Cristina Iglesias, taking viewers on filmed journeys to Iglesias’s site-specific works in cities, museums and natural environments around the world. The films function as artworks in their own right, extending the experience of sculptures that cannot easily be brought into a gallery because their location, architecture, landscape, light, water and surroundings are integral to them. The moving camera effectively becomes the visitor, approaching, entering and moving through the work. This is particularly relevant to the film Hondalea, shown here at SSE. Created in 2021 inside the hollowed-out lighthouse building on Santa Clara Island in San Sebastián, the work combines the existing architecture with bronze, hydraulic machinery and moving water.

 

Hondalea—meaning “marine abyss” or “abysmal depth” in Basque—is a public artwork comprising 54 cast-bronze elements weighing approximately 15 tonnes. Its forms evoke the tides and rugged geology of the Cantabrian Sea. It opened to the public in June 2021, following five years of work, and is located inside the lighthouse on Santa Clara Island in Donostia–San Sebastián Bay. The lighthouse stood empty for many years before Iglesias incorporated it into her work. Inside the restored building, visitors can gaze into the sculptural configuration of Hondalea as water rises as if from the sea below, surging through forms cast in bronze before pooling and trickling away.

 

 

Stills from the film.

 

About the film

Guided Tour VII (Hondalea)
Running time: 14 min 30 sec
Directed by Cristina Iglesias and Asier Altuna
Produced by Asier Altuna
Camera: Txarli Argiñano
Sound: Alazne Ameztoy
Editing: Laurent Dufreche
Visitor: Natalia de Miguel
Captain of the Aitona Julián: Julián Isturiz
Music by Alberto Iglesias

Photo by Jytte Lindberg

About Aurora Borealis Star Dome on Djurgården

The screening of Guided Tour VII (Hondalea) is presented in connection with Iglesias’s newly inaugurated sculpture on Royal Djurgården in Stockholm. Titled Aurora Borealis Star Dome (2026), it is the seventh permanent work acquired for Princess Estelle’s Sculpture Park. The sculpture was inaugurated in June 2026, and Iglesias has described it as:

 

“A sanctuary—a place for contemplation and reflection—an invitation to connect with the cosmos.”

 

The work is a dome-shaped structure approximately five metres high and seven metres wide, made from aluminium, steel and coloured glass. It is installed at the highest point of the Rosendal area, historically known as the “hunting star.” During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this was a central point in the royal hunting park, where long sightlines were cleared through the forest to improve the hunters’ chances of success.

 

Inspired by this site, Iglesias created a structure composed of branch-like forms cast in aluminium that appear to grow out of the bedrock. At the top of the sculpture, a lantern of coloured glass captures and filters daylight, evoking the Northern Lights. Visitors are invited to enter the sculpture, sit or lie beneath the dome, and experience how the light changes over time while observing the surrounding landscape.

Aurora Borealis Star Dome