hi ࿐ྀུ¶
my name is laura fernández antolín, i'm a visual artist and researcher, based in Bilbao.
I develop a practice that pieces our bodies and their context, researching relations of interdependency between humans and otherwise. Softness as driving force, looking into rituals of rest, gathering, and celebration… i create interwoven scenarios that address our perceptions of (un)conditional hospitality, intimacy, gender, trust and commoning,– reclaiming the senses and affections for inhabiting together. Rooted on processual and performative methodologies, often involve collectiveness. My work expands from textiles and biomaterials to scent, writing and drawing.
Excited to be part of FABRICADEMY to deepen my research into post-nature, regenerative practices, sensoriality, and affections between humans and more that humans, throughout this enriching program and all the tools and recources available both online and at the Basque BioDesign Center.
⭑ biography¶
I was born in Valladolid, SP, in 1993. At the age of 17 I moved to Barcelona to study textile design. I soon began to get involved with the visual and performing arts, being an artist in residence at L’Estruch (2014-2015). From 2017 until 2020 i attended the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam to develop my artistic practice. During my first year i was selected as part of the yearly UNCUT exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum and did an intership at BLESS, Paris.To then become assistant of artist Mercedes Azpilicueta for 3 years, with whom I worked hand in hand on her projects and research. I've co-founded different research and art production collectives like Fer Cosa Fora (Barcelona 2015-2016), Groupe de Liason Concrète (Paris 2019-2023), and 101 (2017-2022). Together with the last one, 101, we received the Eremuak Support for Art Collectives Production 2019-2021. I've also participated of numerous artistic residencies, and in 2022 I received the Botín Foundation Grant for Visual Arts, with which I had the opportunity to participate in Rupert’s Alternative Education Program in Vilnius, LT. I also work as a costume designer and scenographer for theater and performance, blending in this way my background in textile and fashion design, with my passion for scenic arts and performance. At the moment aside of taking part of FABRICADEMY 24/25 at Basque BioDesign Centre, I'm developing a project rooted on visual arts and environmental studies part of the Centre for Artistic Residencies at Matadero Madrid (CRA) and will soon be part of the upcoming exhibition Itinerarios XXIX at Botin Centre, in Santander, SP.
༅｡.｡༅♪¶
Extract from a sound piece, working on the concept of geological time in relation to the Altamira cave and its naturecultural environment, as it is one of the caves in the Cantabrian enclave with the UNESCO World Heritage seal. More about this research in the Troglosoma section of my previous work. This audio is a 700% slowdown of a rock collapse, the infrasound of bacteria and the sound that bats make to orient themselves in space when flying. All three overlapped on top of eachother.
⭑ fields of research¶
post-nature
Benito, Clara and Institute for Posnatural Studies, 2024, La condición Posnatural. Cthulu Books
Reflections and questioning of production system under the domestication of living beings, from organic to inorganic for the only purpose of extractivism and profit.
regenerative practices
Need to create by rethinking what and why to make, purpuse to give energy and/or resources back to those contexts and beings that are used as resources.
unperceptible slowness / deep time / cosmic time / geological time
The geologic time scale divides up the history of the earth based on life-forms that have existed during specific times since the creation of the planet. Deep time is a term introduced and applied by John McPhee to the concept of geologic time.
I’m interested in processes of deep time, unreachable to our human sight, into unperceptible mechanism that create movement and vibrations escaping our awareness.
sensoriality
Senses are the potentials that articulate the framework of our bodies in relation with our surroundings, i call membrane to the interrelation between body and their surroundings. Thanks to the senses our membrane is held, and within them we exist, relate and experiment due to consume, process, reach and become troubling our own limits. Explorations through the senses, our bodies and their context are pierced by touch, smell, taste, hearing, and sight. Putting emphasis in the senses other than the sight, as this it's been overexploided in contemporary culture. Leaving aesthetics to arose from sensorial methodologies.
affection
Affect is the power of transformation residing in the relations of encounter between us and our environments. Affect is transversal coming across all layers of sedimentation, from the movement of our feet as we walk to the articulations of language,... Being right where you are with an opening to experiment, to try, to touch, to listen,... grounding from uncertainty affection empowers both membranes and homes to be interwoven by playing with the constraints and desires in an ecology of practices, practices of care.
soft - technologies: weaving, knotting, knitting
Laura Tripaldi, Parallel Minds: Discovering the Intelligence of Materials
⭑ previous work¶
TROGLOSOMA¶
Composed of three artists, two architects, a curator and a scientist, Troglosoma collaborates with the Altamira National Museum and Research Center. Situated in Santillana del Mar, Cantabria, on the northern coast of the Iberian Peninsula, the Cave of Altamira was discovered in 1868 and its Museum showcases Paleolithic art and artifacts dated – for the oldest – from around 36’000 years ago. The cave has indeed been closed to the public since 1977, and is now observable – besides for archaeologists and five lucky visitors a week – only as a fac-simile in the museum named Neocueva. In this situation, we found ourselves unable to enter the cave. However, we explored the site more in-depth than any visitor, bringing our bodies closer to the ground. We touch and smell the minerals once used as pigments in cave paintings. We slide and listen to the sound of the meadows. We dream, day and night, linking our imagination and unconsciousness with the collective experience of the territory. Fascinated by the secret life of the infinite number of agents that cohabit in the cave and their environment: bacteria attached to the rock, fungi, insects, and animals. The water dripping inside. We seek to give voice and tell the multiplicity of latent stories in Altamira by making a cross-section of the geological, biological, and human strata that have existed – and will exist. Showing the delicate balance between the agents of the cave ecosystem as well as the apparatus separating them from the ecosystem of the museum, we found ourselves in an ecotone, an interphase from one domain to another. It is in perpetuating the sensorial adventure we have undertaken in Altamira that we now prepare a multi-agent narrative with interventions occupying all the thresholds of its territory.
June 2024, ongoing research originated within Organismo year zero – Art in Applied Critical Ecologies – program by TBA21 Academy and Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, together with Sofía Kouloukouri, Oxel Urra Sánchez, Manuel Prados, Valentin Bansac, Jorge Van Den Eynde, and Elena Rocabert, being the Altamira National Museum and Research Center our case study. Madrid / Santilla del Mar, SP.
Alongside this research, i facilitated a drawing workshop: drawing through the senses_the case of Altamira, for couple of sessions we worked making our own pigments from plants, soil and other inorganic material at hand.
dintel vulgaris¶
Looking into plant waste, pruning remains and “weeds”. Framed into my research around the domestic and collective rituals of rest, i found in the thistle a medicinal plant loaded with symbolism and ambiguity. While Christian tradition links it to the demonic, pagan tradition uses it as protection for the home. Perhaps for this reason, i made a thistle skin that wraps around the lintel of the door that leads to the sacristy; also a threshold between two spaces, one public and one private. I have carried out material experimentation to create a biopolymer based on pectin and mixed with thistles, and a bio-thread based on alginate.
June 2024, e(z)progui, Navarre, SP.
DRIVE YOUR DREAMS¶
ᎴᏒᎥᏉᏋ ᎩᎧᏬᏒ ᎴᏒᏋᏗᎷᏕ is the cristallization of a deeper research on sleeping rituals as a practice of radical care towards the commodification, domestication, and exploitation of plants, animals, and bodies as labor force. i look towards sleeping rituals as a time and space for resilience, uncommodified rest and productivity, core for creativity, and both inner and external explorations. To bring these ecosystems of reverie to life, i’ve experimented with and shared different rituals of my daily routine in the context of partivipative installations or workshops with a broader otherness. Invitations for entagled dialogues of our uncouncious, memories and imagination, through drawing, movement and automatic writing. The traces of the open creative methodology carried along the months of artistic residency at Rupert Art Center (Vilnius, LT) take shape as an immersive installation made out discarded car materials, what once was a vehicule for commuting and travelling, – a saturated symbol, becomes shelter and encounter ground for rest, entangled stories and imaginative deviations.
December 2022, Rupert, Vilnius, LT.
suaves cuidados¶
Scents and aromatherapy are part of my artistic methodologies. My interested on them came from their properties in relation with the emotional mind, and i enjoy approaching them from an amateur embodied practice as my research goes, resulting on several essential oil blends that have accompanied many of my installations and artworks.
⭑ referents¶
Rebecca Horn Bodily props, look into the geture, mixing functions to provoque something to happen. body - movement - surrounding
Leonel Vásquez landscape - movement - inorganic matter - sound
Saša Spačal Postmedia artist, merges living systems research with contemporary art, emphasising the interconnectedness of the environment-culture continuum within planetary metabolisms. Her artistic endeavours include developing caring biotechnological methodologies and interfaces that engage with both organic and mineral soil agents. In parallel, she explores the fragility of posthuman scenarios, intricately weaving mechanical, digital, and organic logics within the realms of contemporary biopolitics and necropolitics.
Käthe Wenzel Hybrid bodies, queer ecologies, and the structures of urban consumption. In the project Color topographies, Käthe, collected inorganic matter to ferment, oxidat and some other processes from several different locations in Berlin, throught 1 year, to then make ink from plants, residues and other chemical and inorganic urban matter.
Simon Goritschnig biology - archaeology - science fiction
materials research - fibers study - composites creation - study of plants into structures and architecture
Katya Bryskina Artist and experimental architect. Her practice is dedicated to advancing concepts for the future of living, focusing on nurturing a symbiotic relationship between nature and technology. I'm particulary interested in her project: LIFORM: Living Megastructures: an ongoing exploration of natural intelligence and the creation of soft megastructures. It investigates how new forms of interspecies collaboration between humans, mycelium, and potentially machines could evolve.
Alejandra Ortiz de Zevallos Working with communities habitating around the Surco canal in Lima, Alejandra explores the emotional links and cartographies of this pre-columbian body of water that's been contaminated.
Laura Lio
Ecotopias, where do animals live?
Magpie nest made of anti-bird spikes, hostility turned into hospitality article in the New York Times about the topic
