About

ARTIST STATEMENT

My art practice has always primarily revolved around the body and gender. I work across different media including drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, performance and sculpture. I have a background in Fine Art and I approach art-making by using the materials that best suit my current ideas. Since completing an MA in printmaking and working as a printmaker, this is perhaps the medium that I feel more at home with, especially relief printing.

For the past few years a constant preoccupation in my work has been the figurative representation of the body in terms of biological sex, gender, sexuality and reproduction. My practice has been largely a subjective journey of tracing back the historical and cultural meanings ascribed to the female body in Western (Christian) culture. Medieval representations, anatomical illustration and Christian iconography have been a constant reference in my work.

These religious and medical references have become coagulated into a personal artistic universe centered around a primordial ‘opening’ of the body, a wound-vagina charged with symbolic meaning. This carnal orifice-cut draws connections between dissection and surgical practices, Christian themes of creation and sacrifice, Jesus’ wounds and the female sexual-reproductive organs. It refers to the meaning, value and beliefs that culture permeates into female bodies in particular, and by extension, the body in general.

My work involves an exploration of this imagery as well as a feminist critique, aiming to unveil women’s sexuality as the deepest taboo in Christian culture, what underlies patriarchal expressions of creation and sacrifice. My intention is to unmask these male appropriations of female reproductive power and to reveal that the female body has been transformed, usurped and symbolized into male ritualistic versions that position themselves as superior and original.

My recent practice continues to explore the opening of the body now as a playful, uncanny and erotic site of encounter with otherness, with another and with what points to the unknown. The erogenous and reproductive body appears as fundamentally alien and ambiguous, eliciting reactions of curiosity, wonder, shock and fear. This latter work is influenced by Shunga (Japanese erotic prints) and psychoanalysis.

Some of my recent practice gears towards abstraction, inspired by a vision of nature and sexuality as exhuberant, fluid, playful and forever elusive. The creative process in the development of these pieces involves an intuitive approach, playfulness, experimentation, improvisation and a degree of chance. They aim to express the pure pleasure experienced in the making.

CV

Directed Workshops & Courses
2018 October, Gender Woodcut Zines Course (Xilo-Zines de Genero), Complutense University of Madrid.
2018 May, Therapeutic Art Workshop: Creative Expression following the principles of Art Therapy, Fireflies, Madrid.
2017 September, Contemporary Woodcut Practice, Colonnade House, Worthing.
2016 November, Contemporary Printmaking and Editions course, Complutense University of Madrid.
2016 January, Contemporary Woodcut Practice course, Sussex Art & Print.
2013 June, Discovering Relief course, Sussex Art & Print.
2013 January, Contemporary Woodcut Workshops, Sussex Art & Print.
2010 The Garden of Eden, workshop directed at children, Fellowship Art Challenge, Waltham Forest Council, London.
2010 Moorish Dream, screenprinting workshop, Fellowship Art Challenge, Madrid.

Printmaking & Editioning
2012- 2019 Senior Printmaker at Thumbprint Editions, London.
2018 Framing original fine art prints for Joseph Waller Fabrications, London.
2013- 2017 Printmaking tutor for Sussex Art & Print and Colonnade House, Worthing.
2011 Freelance studio technician for Thumprint Editions and Inky Cuttlefish Studios, London.
2010 February- September, Artist in Residence and Studio Technician at Inky Cuttlefish Studios, London.

Grants & Awards
2019 Open Portfolio prize, FIG (International Printmaking Fair) Bilbao.

2012 The Arts Club Charitable Trust Award for Incredulity, Bite: Artists Making Prints, Mall Galleries, London.
2010 ARGO International Internship Grant (Spanish Ministry of Education).
2007-2008 Erasmus Grant (Spanish Ministry of Education).

Solo Exhibitions
2014 November, The Perceptible Tactility of my own Body, The Gate Theatre Commission, London.

Group Exhibitions

2019 47th International Graphic Art Prize Carmen Arozena.

2019 Open Itinera, itinerant exhibition in Basque Country: Art and History Museum of Durango, ARENATZarte Open-air museum of Güeñes, Centro Cívico of Cruces.
2019 November, Festival of Print, East London Printmakers.
2019 July, Mostyn Open 21, Mostyn Gallery, Wales.
2019 July, Quid Pro Quo, joint exhibition with Paul Wye, Brixton Library, London.
2016 June, Mini Print International of Cadaques, Cadaques.
2014 October, A Matter Of, Wild Caper, London.
2014 September, A Matter Of group show and live printing, 198 Gallery, London.
2014 April, The Other Art Fair, Ambika P3 Gallery, London.
2014 January, La Petite Mort et la Grand Hysterie curated by Gabriella Daris, Blacks, London.
2012 September, Bite: Artists Making Prints, Mall Galleries, London.
2012 April, Well Pressed, St Martins-in-the-Field, Crypt Gallery, London.
2011 November, Organos Sexuales Ex/Implicitos en el Arte, UCM, Madrid.
2011 October, Bainbridge Open, Bainbridge Studios, London.
2011 September, Hong Kong Graphic Art Fiesta 2011, Hong Kong Open Print Shop.
2011 June, Protest, Camberwell College, London.
2011 March, 12/12 MA Printmaking Camberwell Interim show, House Gallery, London.
2010 October, Inspired by Morris, William Morris Gallery, London.
2010 September, Julia @t Inky, E17 Art Trail, Inky Cuttlefish Studios, London.
2010 August, Shades of Green, Vestry House Museum, London.
2009 November, Hybrids, Library hall of the Faculty of Fine Arts, UCM, Madrid.
2008 May, PROJECTarte en Maravillas, Patio Maravillas, Madrid.

Performances
2019 Quid Pro Quo, Brixton Library, London.
2013 Cierra la Boca, a series of three performances at politically charged sites, Madrid.
2011 Occult, MA Printmaking Degree Show, Camberwell College of Arts, London.
2011 Abertura, Organos Sexuales Ex/Implicitos Group Exhibition, Complutense University of Madrid.

Research
2014 September, published The Dissector’s Cut, the Wound and the Orifice: Seeing Ron Athey’s performances through a cultural anatomy of the vagina, Performance Research Journal.

Education
2019 (currently pursuing) MA in Art Therapy, UCM, Madrid.
2018-2019 Introduction to Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan, Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, London.
2018 Art Therapy Foundation Course, British Association of Art Therapists, London.
2010-2011 Master of Arts, Visual Arts (Printmaking), Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London.
2005-2009 Fine Arts Degree, (Licentiate) Complutense University of Madrid.
2007-2008 Minor Crucial Differences, Faculty of Social Sciences, Maastricht University, Holland.