The last year on Metàfora’s Studio arts Program is a time for preparing the first major art event in the life of any upcoming artist: Presenting the Thesina and participating in the Final Show.
Metàfora’s advanced level students spend the last months of their training on perfecting their artistic discourse and preparing a substantial and coherent production of artworks to be presented at the end of the course.
At the beginning of the winter-spring semester, each student meets their external tutor for the first time. The external tutor is most often an artist, curator or cultural agent from Barcelona’s art context. Metàfora chooses the external tutor of each student with great care, making sure to find the perfect match of affinities in discourse and interests. The function of the external tutor is to help open doors to the art world and offer an additional perspective on the art work of the student.
Towards the middle of the last semester, the first draft of the thesina is due. The thesina is an extended artist statement, with referencies of influential artists, thinkers etc. The draft is reviewed by Critical Theory teacher, Rubén Verdú. Once the final version of the thesina has been presented, the student prepares a presentation of the main ideas and conclusions to be presented at the end of the semester. The presentation is public and takes place in Barcelona’s prestigious Contemporary Art Museum, MACBA.
The day after the thesina presentation at MACBA is the opening of the final exhibition of works by the advanced level students. The exhibition will normally take place in venues belonging to important Contemporary art galleries, such as Ángels Barcelona or Galería Joan Prats.
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Thesis Presentation 2023
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Leyli Alakbarova (Azerbaijan, 1980)
Alakbarova is an artist working with video and textile. Her interest is in showcasing
her culture and upbringing through usage of imagery from her native Azerbaijan. She is
creating the link between objects or people from the past to our current reality. Being a
child born and raised in the Soviet Union she uses objects of that period in time to talk
about issues women were dealing with then and now.
In her videos as well as her textile work she is interested in how а woman expressеs
herself in everyday live, in particular through the way she dresses. In her abstract
textile pieces she often works with the off-cuts from the tailors that tell a story about
women who make the dresses as well as about those who wear them.
She recently showed her work in Museum of Modern Art (Baku, Azerbaijan) and The
Museum of Azerbaijani Painting of the XX-XXI centuries (Baku, Azerbaijan).
Kirra Kusy (USA, 2001)
Kirra Kusy is an artist working with encounters and accumulation. Her work takes from found objects and second-hand textiles. Using materials that have a previous history, she continues their longevity by constructing them in manners that are as peculiar and absurd as the constructs during which they were invented. These found object studies look into the cross sections of the natural and the pedestrian, excavating the creativity of femininity that exists through necessity. Her work extends and investigates the qualities of these materials and in turn, points to ideas of home, displacement, and a scattered identity.
Cristina Reid (USA, 1993)
Cristina Reid is a multidisciplinary artist working across video, installation and mixed media. Her research based practice deals with the collection, manipulation, fragmentation and distortion of imagery and information and how it is experienced. She is interested in how images function, how they are read, and the narratives and interconnections that occur when disparate images are brought into proximity. Through her investigation of how images and information is circulated, disseminated and archived through time, she explores more profoundly the gaps in these archives, stories and collective and personal memories. Her past studies in art history and archival background influences her practice, as each work stems from a personal archive of images, both physical and digital, which she pulls inspiration from.
Madhulika Mohan (India, 1995)
We make memories but, don’t memories make us?
Memories are our identities-identities are our perception-perceptions are our thoughts-thoughts are our words-words are but lines, dashes, and dots- dressed in our weight.
Madhulika is a multi-disciplinary artist primarily working with text. In the form of videos, poetry, and interactive installations, her works are observations, and notes to understand and deconstruct the ‘human condition’ as experienced through words.
Anais Delforge-Mistry (UK, 2001)
Anais enjoys working with various mediums, such as fabrics, jute and organic materials. She usually works with fragile, everyday materials, often collecting things from the streets. The majority of Anais’ focuses on the process which allows her to have less pressure on creating an aesthetically pleasing piece of work. Each piece of work feels very personal and vulnerable, as she often uses her work to explore difficult topics.
Heather Zehren (USA, 1970)
Heather Zehren is a multidisciplinary artist working in collaboration with objects to investigate the intersections between matter and consciousness. Referencing her background in environmental science and economics, she employs basic principals of theoretical physics and biology, as well as neuroscience and philosophy, to explore the immateriality of objects and their potential agency.
By establishing a dialogue with discarded found objects in various states of degradation, Heather reimagines their function and challenges both the subject object divide as well as the illusion of creative authorship. In a world gone mad with rampant manufacturing and overconsumption, she seeks to stimulate discourse about our human relationship to objects, cycles of physical change, and the interconnectedness between the natural, material and immaterial world.
Yaiza Seguí Latorre (Andorra, 2000)
Throughout these years I’ve been exploring conceptual art from different perspectives.
Emerged from a poetic voice, my love for painting alongside of the beauty and delicacy of nature, have been the main themes and inspiration of my art productions. Portrayed into both poetry and prose my goal is to bring it to an artistic form, exploring different fields such as performance or minimalistic installations, built up with detailed and significant objects, often combined with sound compositions, lights and photography in order to capture the essence of the words through the ephemeral, creating a constant evolution and of my work.
Joely Lorenzen (USA, 1997)
Works with sculpture, sound, installation, video and performance. The current discourse of her work would like to find home in ‘poetic anarchy’. She works with an ongoing commitment to looking at violent systems, credibility and care in an autobiographical framing. She is most interested in themes living in a paradoxical simultaneity. In this discourse, and within its trajectory, lives a curiosity and desire to unpack the effects of deeply religious (Western) Christian consciousness on the psyche and its oppression of bodies, internal dialogue and external dogma and the potential for spirituality to flourish, rather, in structure-less spaces.
April Walton (England, 2000)
I’m a painter, I rarely go outside of painting in my practice. I use mixed media which mainly includes spray-paint and acrylic paint. I like to used my hands as well as a paint brush to create different textures. I tend to do quite abstract backgrounds and then I like to place an object or lines and patterns on top. Alot of my work is inspired by music,gigs and concert culture as well as the Y2K era but I also like to explore other concepts but that is what I’m mainly focused on in the present moment and will continue to do so.
Marina Bethanis (Brazil, 1995)
Marina is an artist whose practice approaches tales of cosmogonies through symbiosis, as well as the eating, digesting, and accumulating processes of invisible life. The work blurs boundaries between painting, sculpture and video with the intention of accessing floating or sunken environments made of digital and physical mediums, threading the path to liminal spaces cluttered with memories and illusion, also reflecting on the role that language plays in these constructions.
Eléa Orengo de Lamazière (South Africa, 1999)
Eléa Orengo de Lamazière is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in South Africa and currently based in Barcelona. Her approach and sensitivity to sensorial experiences have driven her work as well as her research into the realms of playing with one’s senses. She focuses her work in the direction of the natural world as well as our direct visual perceptions within our surroundings. Through site specific installations incorporating bodies of liquid and refracted video projections she invites her viewers to experience their own perspective of ever changing captures of light, sound and colors. Within these she also incorporates her video work in which she captures the world around her with the notion of everything is the same, everything is equal, each being and inanimate object deserve their representation in her eye. She then uses her footage to create abstracted realms closely resembling our own yet through layering and green screening may feel almost dream like with subtle hints of our our worlds own way of abstracting itself. To allow the viewer to experience different reactions within their nervous system she works through creating immersive environments which allows for this.
Having had her video work as the red thread throughout all her pieces and installations she is now also directing and exploring the possibilities of her work entering the nightlife through form of visuals as she believes strongly in the power of sound and how sound combined with visual can have incredible impact on one’s nervous system and mental well-being.
