Laia Estruch exhibits at the Reina Sofía Museum: “At first people laughed at my work”
It is not every day that three people end up on the verge of tears – and beyond – when presenting an art exhibition. But the press conference that Laia Estruch (Barcelona, 1981) gave yesterday at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid was very cathartic. And she reminded those present that making art in Spain is a challenge that at times borders on the impossible and that it is enough to cry even when it is recognized and exhibited in the main contemporary art museum in the country. And not just a small installation, but the totality of projects, 27, that Estruch – “without a doubt the most important performance artist of her generation in our country,” said Manuel Segade, director of the museum – has created since 2011.
A perspective of Laia Estruch's 'Hello everyone' exhibition at the Reina Sofia Museum
EDITORIAL / Third partiesIt is Hello everyone , an exhibition that turns the halls of the Reina Sofía into a sort of warehouse where the devices and structures, metal, textile or inflatable, are accumulated, almost always colourful and with a playful component, that Estruch has built over the years to interact with them with her body and her voice. A voice that, spoken, whispered, shouted or sung by the artist, stitches together the whole exhibition thanks to a host of speakers. An experimentation with the voice, she recalled yesterday, that was hard at first.
The creator has sought with her vocal experimentation to “discover the voices that we all have inside”She stressed that “it has been very difficult to maintain this work of vocal experimentation because when I first presented it, people laughed and it has been very difficult to maintain it. I am very happy that today all my voices can be heard, which I have been training and generating in each of the projects.” Projects that have led her to install colourful pneumatic tunnels 35 metres long and 2.2 metres in diameter in the Oval Room of the MNAC so that the public could pass through its resonant interior. And to get into the Picornell pools to experiment underwater with recited verses and guttural vibratos in the middle of inflatable sculptures in the shape of a chain.
Read also Laia Estruch colonizes the Oval Room with a gigantic playful and habitable creature Teresa Sese
Laia Estruch with the piece 'Crol' within the exhibition 'Hello everyone' at the Reina Sofia Museum
EDITORIAL / Third partiesEstruch admitted yesterday, amused, that her career has been “crossed by a somewhat geeky investigation of a voice to be discovered, or of voices to be discovered, that we all have within us. And in this work I have realized that the body of the voice is the most performative body that I know to this day, because it is born and dies and has a very short duration, and we have to keep generating it.”
And she became emotional, as the co-curator of the exhibition Mariana Cánepa Luna had done before - together with Max Andrews - and as Segade himself would do, until she had to interrupt her explanation: “I am very, very grateful, Manuel. Thank you for receiving our project, for valuing my work. On behalf of my colleagues, it is incredible to be in the halls of the Reina Sofía Museum. We work very hard, very meticulously, it is difficult to be an artist in this country. And we continue working, it is incredible.”
An image from Laia Estruch's 'Hello everyone' exhibition at the Reina Sofía Museum
EDITORIAL / Third parties“Seriously, I am very excited because it has taken me a long time. I wondered what I was doing for four years when nobody called me, when nobody scheduled me.” She added that she was “very happy to see some of my pieces again and see how they reverberate through all the journeys we have made together, because I understand them as other bodies that have accompanied me in this research.”
'Hello everyone' exhibition by Laia Estruch at the Reina Sofia Museum
EDITORIAL / Third partiesShe explained that she doesn’t make the sculptures, but rather “I draw them, design them and think about them so that they give me a series of actions and circuits and dynamics within them that work for me as a place to investigate, as a stage laboratory, as a stage, that make sounds, that generate some sound, some voice, as an instrument and also as a stage score, so that I have places to lean on. Because I understand performance as outside of interpretation. When I do performance I work live, I continue my search, I don’t guarantee anything, I take a risk.”
Laia Estruch at the exhibition
EDITORIAL / Third partiesDuring the exhibition, Estruch will perform live on several occasions. An exhibition that Segade defined as “a mid-career retrospective.” And she stated that “with this exhibition something quite important happens”: the younger artists who under the previous management were shown in the Fisuras program in “slightly smaller spaces are now beginning to be incorporated into the general exhibition program.” “This intergenerational space is fundamental to promote an understanding of the present. The past is something unpredictable and precisely this contamination with the present is what allows us to generate many futures different from those that unfortunately we sometimes have right in front of our noses,” explained the creator.
lavanguardia
