Blood never stops flowing. It's a continuous circuit, vital for sustaining life. This is what Mar Gómez (Madrid, 1977) began to think when she suffered from persistent bleeding, the source of which was unclear. And from these thoughts, her work was born. Blood. An intimate and cultural history of a constant flow (Ariel), a journey through the lens of blood in medicine, literature, religion, and identity.

Anna Boltas, 17, experienced her father being told there wasn't enough blood available for more transfusions to keep him alive when he suffered from bladder cancer. "My sister and I offered to give him the necessary blood, but we were told that donations don't work that way," she explains. So, she decided to donate everything: platelets, blood, and plasma. In 2019, Carlos González had a headache. It didn't seem like anything that couldn't be cured with ibuprofen, but he began to feel a strange heartbeat, and in the emergency room, he discovered he had an arteriovenous malformation in his brain that needed surgery. During the 18-hour operation, 36 bags of donated blood were used. "My 14-year-old daughter doesn't tell me she wants to be of age to go out and party, but rather to donate blood," he boasts.

A young person can have up to 200,000 stem cells, which are responsible for the production of billions of red and white blood cells and platelets every day, which then circulate in our blood. As we age, the blood system deteriorates: stem cells are lost and the generation of new cells is impaired. For this reason, aging is one of the main risk factors for a wide range of diseases, including cancer and Alzheimer's.