Exhibition: «An Expansive Occupation» by Amaia Gracia Azqueta at URIBITARTE40

“An Expansive Occupation” is the title of the latest production by the Navarrese artist Amaia Gracia Azqueta, within the framework of the BilbaoArte scholarship with studio assignment in 2023-24, and her subsequent stay in the Otxarkoaga Opengela studios. The works, the result of her research into sculpture and the plasticity of the materials used and emulated by the masses of folds represented in the cloaks and fabrics of Renaissance and Baroque sculpture, or classical Greco-Roman sculpture, from Classical, Baroque and Renaissance sculpture, dialogue with each other generating a set of pieces that function as a specific installation for the space that houses it, the URIBITARTE40 Hall of the BilbaoArte Foundation.

The project, which can be seen from 11 April to 1 June, will be completed with several guided tours in Basque and Spanish, adapted to LSE (Spanish Sign Language) on 30 April and 14 May at 19:00 h.; a collaboration and discussion with the designer and creator Miriam Ocáriz on 8 May at 19:00 h.; and a presentation of the book, on 22 May at 19:00 h., edited on the occasion of the project together with Juan Pablo Huércanos, deputy director of the Oteiza Museum, curator and author of the text of the publication, published on the occasion of the project together with Juan Pablo Huércanos, deputy director of the Oteiza Museum, curator and author of the text of the publication. Access to the exhibition and the programmed activities is free of charge.

“An Expansive Occupation” is linked to the artist’s previous lines of work and evolves towards new parameters. Her artistic proposal is based on and gives continuity to “Floating Cloak”, a project selected in 2023/24 at the BilbaoArte Foundation under the modality of a grant with studio assignment, which alludes to the masses of folds represented in the cloaks and fabrics of Renaissance and Baroque sculpture, or classical Greco-Roman sculpture, from which the artist takes nostalgia as her premise.

This feeling of longing for the past and reflection on temporal space is inspired by Japanese culture and the term “Nagori”, which is the residue left after an event, translated into the outline marked on the sand as a result of the trail of water and foam left on the surface by the action of the tides. A trace marked on the previous one that allows the artist to approach abstract concepts such as time or temporality through the sensitive and the affections. Something that the artist connects with the autobiographical, and makes her reflect on the expired and mortal nature of the human being that follows the linear course of time in a unique sense; or on the random work of art, which for the artist is where ‘that moment’ is found that becomes an event in the form of an idea, work or project, and keeps the artist, just as one waits for the wave to break and leave its mark, in a continuous task, in a continuous search and in a continuous wait.

Amaia Gracia Azqueta raises the lack of structure in contemporary society and the use of plastic as a liquid material to symbolically deal with temporality and resistance, in a clear allusion to the writings on “liquid modernity” coined by the Polish-British sociologist, philosopher and essayist Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017).

The exhibition project, “An expansive occupation”, is a story and a declaration of what is happening. A set of pieces that function as a site-specific installation, among which we find everything from small photographs taken with a mobile phone and printed in the format of a domestic photo belonging to the everyday life from which the artist understands the meaning of sculpture; to large installations such as the one made in collaboration with the artist and designer Miriam Ocáriz, in which she fuses contemporary art and fashion, and delves into the plastic properties of the clothes represented in classical sculpture; Or a final group of more experimental pieces made of polyvinyl acetate, fibreglass and iron structures that occupy the exhibition space and connect some proposals with others, just as waves flow, time passes, or concepts are diluted and mutate in the era of contemporary post-modernity.

Amaia Gracia Azqueta
Sin título (2024)
Location specific installation. White glue and iron. Courtesy of the artist

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