It is 11:00 a.m., and six people are sitting around a large rectangular table. A chaotic jumble of clippings, photographs, construction paper, full-color magazines, scissors, and glue sticks covers the entire board from end to end. A man gives instructions while the rest busily rummage through the mountain of paper, looking for a piece of an image that will fit into the artwork he is creating on a sheet of cardstock. We’re in an analog collage workshop. But not just any workshop. It is a “vintage surrealist collage” centered on the figure of the philosopher Averroes to commemorate the 900th anniversary of his birth.

And how can Averroes and his philosophy be depicted in a vintage surrealist collage? Good question. The instructor’s name is Beto Val, and he has revolutionized the world of collage with his fascinating hybrid creatures, which look like they’ve escaped from a Jules Verne adventure . He holds a handful of tokens he made himself and asks one of the five students in the workshop to choose one at random.

Each entry explores an idea from Averroes’s philosophical work. For example: reason and faith, one of the scientific dilemmas that shaped his intellectual journey. At the top of the entry, the question is stated: “Averroes defended an idea that was revolutionary for his time: philosophy and religion were not enemies.” Further down, against a black background, it poses a question: “What seemingly opposing forces coexist in your life?” He then suggests some possible avenues for reflection: “Work and creativity. Tradition and change. Emotion and logic.” And finally, he suggests some visual clues: “A heart made up of two distinct parts. A tree with roots and branches bearing different symbols.”

Using these guidelines—or similar ones—students should create a collage on white, black, or blue cardstock that expresses, through images, the philosophical ideas that shaped the work of the great philosopher from Córdoba. Everyone has a pair of scissors and a glue stick. And spread out on the table is an ocean of magazines, publications, and photographs, ready to be dissected and transformed into other printed forms. Meanwhile , Vicente Amigo plays on a giant television screen.

“There are several types of collages,” explains the Ecuadorian artist based in Madrid. “This piece we’re working on now about Averroes is a narrative collage. The idea is to express a thought using abstract images that still make sense.” But there are other variations. For example, therapeutic collage. What matters in this type of exercise is not the final result but the process of “releasing inner energy.” It is a type of collage that is widely used by children and in school settings. Or aesthetic collage, which seeks beauty solely through geometric shapes and color contrasts.

Beto Val had never heard of Averroes. In Ecuador, the philosopher from Córdoba is a complete unknown. The first time he heard his name was when Bárbara Ruiz Bejarano, a board member of the Las Fuentes Foundation, picked up the phone and suggested that he organize a collage workshop in Córdoba as part of the 900th anniversary of his birth. “That’s when I began to study the character and his way of thinking,” the artist admits. “And I discovered that it explored the union of two worlds: the world of science and the world of beliefs.” The challenge he faced was how to “ground” the character in a collage. And how can we convey on a poster that “philosophy and religion are not enemies, but rather the search for truth through different paths”?

While Beto Val chats briefly with the reporter, the workshop students rummage through all the materials spread out on the table to begin putting together their collages. Now Amal Mathlouthi‘s ethereal voice can be heard on the big TV screen. “Music is important,” he emphasizes, “because it helps us cope with silence.” From time to time, the instructor gets up and walks over to check on his students’ progress on the poster. Look closely at the clippings they’ve pasted onto the paper and listen patiently to each artist’s explanations and the reasoning behind each composition.

The Ecuadorian artist has led five workshops in Córdoba—three at the Mateo Inurria School of Art and Design and two others at the Las Fuentes Foundation. In total, more than 40 people registered over the course of two consecutive days.

Until the pandemic began in March 2020, Beto Val worked as a graphic designer and advertising professional. To combat the endless hours of downtime during lockdown, he began experimenting with old graphic materials and came across a digitized field notebook containing hundreds of freely accessible images of the animal and plant worlds. “I would combine birds with the bodies of fish or plants in a purely playful exercise, ” the artist explains.

He created hundreds of exotic creatures that he posted on Instagram with growing success. And in just four years, his following grew from 400 to 300,000. Today, Beto Val is admired for having developed a highly personal and recognizable personal brand. “They’re creatures that look like they’re from 200 years ago, yet they seem real and organic. And that’s the twist that has allowed me to stand out,” he explains in a room at the Las Fuentes Foundation. He has sold thousands of prints online and has designed clothing collections, book covers, wine labels, and even a New York Times front page.

For years, he has been living a nomadic life, traveling between Italy, Spain, and Quito. “Europe inspires me, ” he says. In Ecuador, he worked mainly in children’s entertainment and even created a superhero who gained some popularity. And now he feels more like a “surrealist” than a “collagist.” For Beto Val, surrealism is a form of “rebellion” and “nonconformity” with the surrounding reality. A way to break with convention.

Her workshops typically last about three hours and include a collaborative collage created by all the students working together. As they assemble their compositions on their own pieces of cardstock, they contribute to a collaborative work that evolves in the most unpredictable ways. The collaborative collage they are currently working on is based on a vintage image of a typewriter, which the instructor himself has cut out and pasted. Little by little, the students complete the artwork by adding images, gradually giving shape to an unpredictable and surprising composition.

After all, the goal of the workshop is to let the imagination run wild and break through the rational limits imposed by reality. “I like hands-on workshops,” says Beto Val. “Because here,” adds the digital artist, “he has come to play and build a new, different, and exciting universe.”