Laia Estruch (Barcelona, 1981). She lives and works in Barcelona.
She studied Fine Arts at Universitat de Barcelona and The Cooper Union University in New York.
She has received the 'Ciutat de Barcelona 2021' award, the 'Cervezas Alhambra 2022' award and the 'Premis Galeries 2019 de la revista Núvol'.
The artistic practice of Laia Estruch delves into the language of the body and the voice, on the threshold between sculpture and performance. The artist understands the voice as an extension of the body, an instrument to develop her project sand synthesize issues related to language, speech, gender or social structures. In her most recent work, the artist has investigated how urban spaces and their physical structures play an important role in everyday life. Using the ‘spoken word’, songs, objects and publications, her projects analyse the emotive possibilities of the a cappella voice and the undramatized body, opening a space of reflection in relation to the performative character of language, sound recording and its oral archive. She designs sculptural sets conceived as scenes, spaces for experimentation, which allow her to bring the body and the word to the field of action through her voice, sonorous and gestural.
Her work has previously been shown, among other places, at Macba, Barcelona (2012 and 2022), Fundación Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona (2014), Centro Párraga, Múrcia (2016), Teatro Pradillo, Madrid (2016), Antic Teatre, Barcelona (2016), Chapelle des the Beaux-Arts, Paris (2017), at CA2M, Madrid (2017), Museo Picasso, Barcelona (2018), Fundación Botí, Córdoba (2018), CentroCentro, Madrid (2019), Fundación Joan Miró, Espai13, Barcelona (2019), Centro Cultural de España en México CCEMx (2020) Mexico City, Festival Sâlmon de Barcelona (2020), Festival Poesia i + a Caldes d'Estrac (2020), Festival Grec / Creació i Museus (2020), Fundació Joan Brossa de Barcelona (2020/21), La Virreina Centre de la imatge de Barcelona (2020), Galeria Heinrich Ehrhardt de Madrid (2020/21), La Virreina Centre de la imatge de Barcelona (2020), Galeria Heinrich Ehrhardt de Madrid (2020), 'Festival Embarrat', Museu Trepat in Tàrrega (2021), 'Festival Plataforma 2021' at the Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporáneo (CGAC) in Santiago de Compostela de Galícia (2021), Festival 'Domingo' at the Casa Encendida in Madrid (2021), PUBLICS 2022) in Helsinki, ARCO Fair in Madrid (2022), Centro de Arte La Panera (2022) in Lleida, in the collection of Thyssen Bornemisza TBA21 at C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba (2022), Fundación Sandretto in Madrid (2022), galeria Ehrhardt-Flórez, Madrid (2022), Fundación Cerezales Antonino y Cinia, León (2022), Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao (2022), Hauser and Wirth Menorca (2023), TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes (2023), MNAC Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya de Barcelona (2023), Galeria Municipal do Porto de Portugal (2023), Concomitentes - Aguas Vivas en Cantabria (2023-24), PATIO ZONAMACO Mexico (2024).
Photo credit: Javi Fernández