Carmen de Ayora

At 18, I managed to leave my hometown to study fine arts in Valencia. I make big and heavy sculptures. I have something to tell that is deeply hidden. Art awards and festivals –Valencia, Alicante, Zaragoza– don’t bring much satisfaction. 1993 and 1995 are spent in Paris within the Erasmus Programme and in Belgium, at Les Brasseurs. I work with throwaway materials, abstract thought as a means to confront reality, drawing and collage understood as a leap towards sculpture. At Arte Joven –Madrid– topics come from intimacy and emerge via architecture and the body. 1996 –quam, exhibition with Creatures, publications–: from a conceptual radicality, I work with texts but I’m not giving up on drawing and its inherent flexibility. In 1999, I decide to separate myself from the whirlwind of the art system and found a group outside of the mainstream trends centered on private performances and self-consumption exhibitions shared with friends that advocates for painting as a means to convey personal topics. In 2012, in Galeria Alegria, I manage to unite painting with conceptual art, personal concerns and social criticism. In 2014, at etHall, I produce drawings in continuous dialogue within an artists’ collective. Tiempo libre at halfhouse–2015– is dedicated to social criticism and drawing. In 2018, at Fabra i Coats and La Escocesa, I embark on the journey between being myself and belonging to a group, a conflict inherent to my own existence that materialises in drawings, paintings, performances, text and installations, always hand in hand with poverty.