Itziar Barrio is a multimedia artist based in NYC. BY ALL MEANS, her survey exhibition was curated by Johanna Burton, Director of The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and former curator at the New Museum. Barrio’s monograph catalogue will be published by international publishing house SKIRA in 2023.
Smack Mellon (NYC) recently presented did not feel low, was sleeping, premiering Itziar Barrio’s multidisciplinary trilogy Material (2016-2023) as a site specific installation in the main gallery space. The exhibition comprised film based projects A Demon that Slips into Your Telescope While You’re Dead Tired and Blocks the Light; ROBOTA MML; and Particle Matter alongside a new series of sculptures, some of which are robotic. The exhibition unfolded across multiple screens and objects through speculative narratives and non-linear timelines to investigate the intersections between technology, labor, identity, and matter.
Barrio’s long term project THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE (2010 - 2022) consisting in making a movie over time and in real time, premiered at PARTICIPANT INC, NYC, in 2022. Its last iteration took place at the Spanish Academy in Rome and previous ones at El Museo del Banco de la República in Bogotá in 2017 (produced by Rincón Projects); and PARTICIPANT INC in 2016 (sponsored in part by AC/E). Following the performance a solo show by Itziar Barrio took place in the gallery space. This project merges different media and challenges notions of social rules, participating in a larger debate about labor conditions and subjectivity. THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE places a cast of performers within fictional and non-fictional parameters, using material from iconic movie scripts, narratives from their own lives, manifestos, and historical and recent events. The audience witnesses at the same time the performance and the making of a movie.
Itziar Barrio's work has been presented internationally at: 14th Shanghai Biennale, MACRO Museum, Rome; MATADERO, Madrid; MACBA, Barcelona; Museum of Contemporary Art of Belgrade, Serbia; PARTICIPANT INC, New York City; Abrons Arts Center, New York City; Anthology Films Archives, NYC; tranzit, Romania; (ENPAP) European Network of Public Art Producers; Espacio ODEÓN, Bogotá, Colombia; ARTIUM Museum, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain; Hudson Valley Center of Contemporary Art (HVCCA), Peekskill, NY; Festival of Ideas for the New City at New Museum, NYC; Havana Biennial 2009, Cuba; Storefront for Art and Architecture, NYC; acb Gallery, Budapest, Hungary; Rincón Projects, Bogota, Colombia; 404 Festival of Post-Electronic Art 2008, Trieste, Italy; PiSt, Istanbul, Turkey; Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk, Poland; The Kunsthaus Tacheles, Berlin; LOOP, Barcelona; Sala Rekalde, Bilbao, Spain; and Galerie Thomas Henry Ross, Montreal.
Itziar Barrio is a New Museum’s incubator NEW INC member (2020-2023) and was a 2018-2019 recipient of the Spanish Academy in Rome Fellowship. She has received awards and grants from NYSCA, the Brooklyn Arts Council, the Spanish Ministry of Culture, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, NYC, as well as BBVA Foundation and the First Prize Ertibil. She has participated in a number of residencies including the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, La Escuelita Nicaragua and The International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP).
She has lectured at NYU, MICA, Hunter College, Pratt Institute, Montclair University and Parsons, The New School, among many others. She teaches at the School of Visual Arts (NYC) and Sarah Lawrence College (NY).
Barrio’s work has been written about in ARTFORUM, Art in America, The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, ART PAPERS and BOMB among many others.
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