Join is for a very special spotlight on MIA artist Julia Llerena and Carlota Santamaria in honor of the exhibition RED RED RED Geometry of a Scar.
Julia Llerena
Julia Llerena (Seville, Spain, 1985) studied Fine Arts in Seville, Barcelona, and Florence. She later completed a Master's Degree in Art Research and Creation at the Complutense University of Madrid. Her work has been exhibited at the Biennial of Young Artists from Europe, Mediterranea 16 (Ancona, Italy); the Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art (CAAC, Seville, Spain); Conde Duque Contemporary Culture Center (Madrid, Spain); LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre (Gijón, Spain); Carl-Henning Pedersen & Else Alfelts Museum (Herning, Denmark); MuVIM (Valencia, Spain); Domus Artium 2002 / DA2 (Salamanca, Spain); Espacio OTR (Madrid, Spain); the Spanish Embassy in Tokyo (Japan); Espacio Odeón (Bogotá, Colombia); Blueproject Foundation (Barcelona, Spain); and the Rodriguez Foundation (Poznań, Poland), among others, as well as galleries such as Sabrina Amrani, Espacio Mínimo, RocíoSantaCruz, and Cibrián Gallery.
Among the grants and awards she has received are the Blueproject Foundation Residency (Barcelona, Spain), Laboratorio Brecha (La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico), the INJUVE Creation Grant 2015, the 26th Circuitos de Artes Plásticas, and the Community of Madrid Production Grant. She has completed creative residencies at Matadero Madrid (Spain), Brecha (La Paz, Mexico), La Moissie (France), and La Maison N’Zima (Ivory Coast).
Carlota Santamaría is a participatory installation artist and experiential designer. Her practice examines the relationship between inner experience and the world we inhabit.
Drawing on sustained self-inquiry, ritual, and more than two decades of creative direction, she creates authored experiential systems that bring sculptural environments and collective actions into dialogue. Participants’ gestures and decisions shape the work, giving concepts a material and social form that can be inhabited and questioned.
Her installations invite us to question what we take for granted about ourselves, others, and the world, opening a space where familiar certainties can give way to curiosity and the possibility of transformation.
