Alba Matilla
Sanctuary consists of a virtual journey through a small floating world composed of photogrammetries. The project takes small fragments of reality imbued with a rich historical context and an aesthetic related to abandonment or the so-called terrains vagues, and establishes a dialogue about deindustrialisation and the fossils it leaves in the landscape. Once they are recorded in 3D, these specific places are “frozen” and stored in the cloud, immune to the passage of time, immobile and indifferent to the fact that their physical version is about to disappear forever. Thus protected from harm as digits, the ensemble is consecrated as a kind of sanctuary of abandonment, bestowing a divine and celestial character to these forgotten spaces. In this call for quarterly residencies for projects on the environment, we will explore how interactivity affects the ways in which we generate discourse and we will invite the viewer to reflect on the landscape and more specifically on this highly modified landscape, now in a state of abandonment.
BIO
Alba Matilla (Avilés, 1998) graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Vigo and went on to take a master’s degree in Research and Creation in Contemporary Art at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at the Montehermoso Cultural Centre in Vitoria-Gasteiz (2024), and in group exhibitions at the LABoral Art Centre, Gijón (2024); the Upper Gallery, UAL, London (2023) and the CTJV Gallery in Monçao, Portugal (2022), among others. She has participated in contemporary art festivals such as Eufònic (Tarragona, 2024) and INTERSECCIÓN (A Coruña 2022). In 2024, she was awarded the “Young Asturias” Award for Plastic Arts.
One of the recipients of the 2024 Quarterly Residencies for Projects on the Environment for visual artists at Matadero Madrid’s Centre for Artists in Residence.