The March 2025 monthly Cover Story “Hello Everyone from the Museo Reina Sofía” is now up on our homepage: www.lttds.org (after March this story will be archived here).
“Curated by Latitudes, “Hello Everyone”—Laia Estruch’s largest exhibition to date—transforms the Museo Reina Sofía, in Madrid, into a resonant space for voice and sculptural presence. Across 27 works spanning more than a decade, Estruch shows how she has developed a performance language that is both physical and sonic, sculpting space with, and for, the force of vocalisation.” → Continue reading
Cover Stories are published monthly on Latitudes’ homepage featuring past, present, or forthcoming projects, research, texts, artworks, exhibitions, films, objects, or field trips related to our curatorial projects and activities.
ABOUT LAIA ESTRUCH
Laia Estruch (Barcelona, 1981) has had solo exhibitions at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona (2023); Spiritvessel, Espinavessa (2022); Fundació Joan Brossa, Barcelona (2020); Capella de Sant Roc, Valls (2019); and at Espai 13, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (2019).
Recent group exhibitions include “After Paradise”, Kortrijk Triennial, Belgium (2024); “Topalekuak”, Tabakalera, Donostia (2024); Patio by ZONAMACO, ABC Art Baja, San José del Cabo, Mexico (2024); “I drank words submerged in dreams”, 23 Bienal de Arte Paiz, Guatemala (2023); “After the Mediterranean”, Hauser & Wirth, Menorca (2023); “Panorama 21. Notes for an Eye Fire”, MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2021) and “La cuestión es ir tirando”, Centro Cultural de España, Mexico City (2020).
Estruch has performed in numerous public events within the framework of exhibitions, biennials and festivals, including “Segar i cantar”, Lo Pati, Amposta (2024); “The Listening Affect”, Galeria da Biodiversidade, Porto (2023); “Passat / Present”, Centre d’Interpretació d’Art Rupestre de la Roca dels Moros del Cogul, Lleida (2022); 10th Deleste Festival, Bombas Gens, Valencia (2022); “The Journeying Stream”, TBA21, Sotos de la Albolafia, Córdoba (2022), Bianyal 2021, Vall de Bianya (2021) or “Plataforma. Festival de Artes Performativas”, Parque de Bonaval, Santiago de Compostela (2021), amongst other.
In 2022 Estruch won the 6th Premio Cervezas Alhambra de Arte Emergente (Alhambra Beer Award for Emerging Art) with the work “Zócalo”, and was awarded the 2021 Premi Ciutat de Barcelona (City of Barcelona Prize) in the category of Visual Arts.
Works in public space include “Moat-2 / Playground Scene” (2017–18) at Fabra i Coats Fàbrica de Creació, Barcelona; and the recently completed Concomitentes public commission “Aguas Vivas”, at Llanos de Penagos, Cantabria (2024).
Estruch has a BA in Fine Arts from the Universitat de Barcelona (2010) and studied Performance Art and Sound Art at The Cooper Union, New York (2010). She regularly lectures at the Facultat de Belles Arts, Universitat de Barcelona.
Her work is represented by Galería Ehrhardt Flórez, Madrid.
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The October 2022 monthly Cover Story “Stray Ornithologies—Laia Estruch” is now up on our homepage: www.lttds.org
“Within the context of PUBLICS’ annual gathering Today Is Our Tomorrow, on 8 October Laia Estruch and Irina Mutt will lead a workshop in Helsinki as part of this year’s programme focusing on the presentness of the voice in its many sonic forms, vocal modes and acoustic modalities.” Continue reading
After October 2022 this story will be archived here.
Cover Stories are published on a monthly basis on Latitudes’ homepage featuring past, present or forthcoming projects, research, texts, artworks, exhibitions, films, objects or field trips related to our curatorial projects and activities.
Within the context of PUBLICS’ annual gathering Today Is Our Tomorrow in Helsinki, artist Laia Estruch and curator Irina Mutt will lead a workshop on October 8th, 2022, as part of this year’s programme focusing on the presentness of the voice in its many sonic forms, vocal modes and acoustic modalities.
This workshop culminates a series of encounters, part of Latitudes’ ongoing Parahosting at PUBLICS, that have taken place over the summer of 2022 in collaboration with PUBLICS Youth, an education initiative for Helsinki-based 18-21-year-olds.
Following a principle of a tour to bodies rather than to space, the sessions have encompassed new embodiments of Estruch’s “Ocells Perduts” (Stray Birds) (2021), a work originally produced for MACBA’s exhibition “Panorama 21. Notes for an Eye Fire”, curated by Latitudes and Hiuwai Chu, and supported by PUBLICS.
Latitudes’ Max Andrews, a curator, writer and lifelong birder, recently conducted the podcast “Minor” Ornithologies for TBA21 on st_age (Season 4, Episode 4). The podcast’s guests are Alex Holt, a spokesperson for Bird Names for Birds, a movement to decolonise bird names, and zoömusicologist Dr Hollis Taylor who specialises in birdsong. Through their perspectives, we glimpse new and speculative kinds of human–bird narratives – what Anna-Sophie Springer and Etienne Turpin have coined “minor ornithologies”.
The interviews are complemented by two audio clips, one of a Pied Butcherbird recorded in N Queensland, and another of a Superb Lyrebird mimicking birdsong and two flute phrases recorded in New South Wales, both courtesy of Hollis Taylor.
This edition accompanies Laia Estruch’s performance “Ocells Perduts V67” (2022) also produced by TBA21 on st_age, and takes flight into the realm of birds, looking at politics and practices that disrupt dominant historical narratives, and exceed scientific and cultural boundaries.
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30 March 2022: frieze.com publishes Max Andrews’ review of Bruno Zhu’s exhibition “I am not afraid” at Cordova in Barcelona. The frieze summer issue will include a printed version.
31 March 2022: Press trip to Córdoba on the occasion of “Abundant Futures”, the inaugural exhibition Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) organises in C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba, as part of their three-year-long collaboration agreement.
Seven artists are currently exhibiting in Madrid or Córdoba with works produced, presented or derived from their original presentation in the group exhibition “Panorama 21. Apunts per a un incendi dels ulls” that took place at MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, between October 2021 and February 2022, curated by Hiuwai Chu and Latitudes.
Rosa Tharrats opened her first solo exhibition at Galería Ehrhardt Flórez in Madrid. Titled “Theta Wave” (until July 3, 2022) it presents a new installation made with her signature materials, including recycled textiles and clothes, bioplastics, sponges, nets or stones, and is complemented with a suite of framed drawings and a sculpture made with discarded marble pieces intersected with fabrics. The text accompanying Rosa’s exhibition is written by another Panorama participant, Gabriel Ventura, whose performative action and poem “Passió i cartografia per a un incendi dels ulls” titled the small book published as the colophon of the exhibition.
The next show at Galería Ehrhardt Flórez will be a solo by Panorama participant Laia Estruch, coinciding with Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend that inaugurates the 2022–23 season.
Originally premiered in July 2021 at The Green Parrot, Adrian Schindler’s series of posters “The roles (notes for a film)” (2021–ongoing) is part of his ongoing research tracing Morocco’s colonial past in Spanish society, which culminates in his film trilogy “Tetuan, Tetuán, Tetwan”, whose first part was premièred at MACBA, and has been produced with the support of the Department de Cultura of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Casa de Velázquez and the Centre national des arts plastiques in Paris, with the collaboration of 2deo.
Besides the installation “Constellation” (2021–ongoing) Arash Fayez presents “Anecdotes From the Elsewhere” a performance developed alongside “Anecdotes to be forgotten” which was presented in MACBA on December 9, 2021, alongside his works “Apolis” (2014-18/2021) and “Limbo” (2018-2021).
Claudia Pagès just opened the solo show “Abajo el puerto suena nino-nino, y yo arriba pipí” at The RYDER in Madrid, where the centrepiece is the video installation “Gerundio Circular” (2021), a 14-minute, 360º film presented on a circular LED screen which was commissioned for “Panorama 21. Apunts per a un incendi dels ulls” and co-produced with ELAMOR. On view until July 30, 2022.
Aleix Plademunt’s “Matter”, his most comprehensive solo show to date, is on view until July 24, 2022, at Sala Canal Isabel II as part of PHotoEspaña 2022. As Elena Vozmediano noted in her review, a selection of 18 large prints were originally premiered in MACBA’s exhibition “Panorama 21. Apunts per a un incendi dels ulls”.
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The April 2022 monthly Cover Story “Mix & Match: Laia Estruch at PUBLICS” is now up on our homepage: www.lttds.org
“On 17 March 2022, the first event of a year-long “Parahosting” collaboration between Latitudes and PUBLICS took place in Helsinki. The Parahosting programme of PUBLICS began in 2018, and it has grown into a key method of decentering the authorship of the curatorial agency through a flexible, evolving, expanding, and sometimes messy, practice of working together.” Continue reading
→ After April 2022 this story will be archived here.
Cover Stories' are published on a monthly basis on Latitudes' homepage featuring past, present or forthcoming projects, research, texts, artworks, exhibitions, films, objects or field trips related to our curatorial projects and activities.
PUBLICS Parahosting began in the Autumn of 2018 and has grown into a key method of decentering its own curatorial authorship, and as an essential means of working together without boundaries or containment.
Through Parahosting PUBLICS supports its para-sites, para-institutions, and para-guests, and has grown into a flexible, evolving, expanding, and sometimes messy, programme. In 2020–2021 PUBLICS Parahosted curatorial studio Shimmer (Eloise Sweetman and Jason Hendrik Hansma) with a year-long project ACROSS THE WAY WITH… where artists, poets, philosophers, and curators from around the world were invited to explore the notion of intimacy through online readings.
Latitudes collaborated with PUBLICS in September 2019 as a partner organisation in the first edition of the multidisciplinary arts festival Today is Our Tomorrow initiated by PUBLICS, presenting the performance “Yegua-Yeta-Yuta” (2015-ongoing) by Argentina-born, Amsterdam-based artist Mercedes Azpilicueta.
In 2021, PUBLICS supported the production of Laia Estruch’s “Ocells Perduts” (Stray Birds, 2021), a new work commissioned for the first MACBA triennial exhibition “Panorama 21. Notes for an Eye Fire” (October 2021–February 2022).
About PUBLICS
PUBLICS is a curatorial agency with a dedicated library, event space and reading room in Helsinki, Finland. As such PUBLICS is an educational resource where critical learning, knowledge production and discursive programming are integral to its curatorial approach. Under the artistic direction of curator Paul O’Neill, with program manager Eliisa Suvanto, PUBLICS explores a “work together” institutional model with multiple overlapping objectives, thematic strands and collaborations.
https://www.publics.fi
About Laia Estruch
Laia Estruch’s practice hinges on the voice as a material reality—an expressive force and a medium that is expelled from the body. Over the last decade, her work has broached the fields of sculpture and contemporary art, spoken word, and experimental theatre, undertaking a kind of no-frills exploration of the voice’s communicative and emotive grammar while probing the conventions of staging it. Her interest focuses on the extremities and porosity of the spoken word in its relationship with song and raw sound. The articulation of noises and meanings often encompasses and exceeds human vocal language: breathing, exclamation, mumbling, ululation, cries and whispers. The voice is recast as an extraordinary, supra-human object. Estruch’s recent performances have involved scenes and routines in which her body is suspended above the ground, be it via the playground-like structures and inflatables of “Moat” (2016–2018), the swimming pool setting of “Crol” (2019), the hanging stage of “Ganivet” (2020–2021) or the monumental bird trap of “Ocells Perduts” (2021–2022).
Laia Estruch has a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from the Universitat de Barcelona (2010) and also studied at The Cooper Union, New York (2010). She has had solo exhibitions at the Fundació Joan Brossa, Barcelona (2020–2021); Capella de Sant Roc, Valls (2019); and Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (2019). Her group exhibitions include “Panorama 21: Apunts per a un incendi dels ulls” MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2021–2022), “La cuestión es ir tirando”, Centro Cultural de España, Mexico City (2020), and “Back to School”, Fundación Rafael Botí, Córdoba (2018). In 2022 she won the 6th Premio Cervezas Alhambra de Arte Emergente (Alhambra Beer Award for Emerging Art) and in 2021 she was awarded the Premi Ciutat de Barcelona (City of Barcelona Prize) in the category of Visual Arts.
https://laiaestruch.com
About Latitudes
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