Julia Llerena

ARTIST’S PROFILE

Julia holds a degree in Fine Arts, which she completed between the University of Seville, the University of Barcelona, and the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence. She also earned a Master’s in Research in Art and Creation from the Complutense University of Madrid.

Her recent solo exhibitions include Desbordar al centro de la noche, Galería Sabrina Amrani (Madrid); Autumn Moon over Still Lake, Rodríguez Foundation (Poznań); La palabra, menos una, Cibrián Gallery (San Sebastián); In event of moon disaster, Fresh Window (New York); Estrato 0, Los lugares de un ardid, Hospital Real, FACBA (Granada); and Home, una cuestión global, INICIARTE. Sala Santa Inés (Seville).

Her work has also been shown collectively at the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art (Denmark), Centro Conde Duque (Madrid), Centro Párraga (Murcia), Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporània (Valencia), LOOP Festival (Fabra i Coats, Barcelona), Espacio Odeón (Bogotá), Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, and the Spanish Embassy in Tokyo, as well as at the ARCO art fair, among others.

Among the grants and awards she has received are the DKV Collection Acquisition Prize, Blueproject Foundation (Barcelona), Laboratorio Brecha (La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico), Injuve Creation Grant 2015, Circuitos de Artes Plásticas XXVI, and the Production Grant from the Community of Madrid.

Read about Julia’s residency project in her own words… 

“This residency offers me the space and time to experiment with pictorial matter in a more intimate way. My main focus will be on manipulating pigments and textures to construct and deconstruct surfaces through the technique of sgraffito—patiently wearing away the material to reveal mysteries and cosmic connections.

The aim is to explore how forms interact and slide across the pictorial plane, generating overlapping rhythms that transcend representational logic. The final project will take shape as a series of pieces that reveal both the process of erosion and the emergence of form, understood as a sensory consequence of material interaction—an operation in which form becomes nothing more than the result of a series of encounters and disintegrations.

It is an intuitive process, directly connected to the present body and to hidden knowledge that surfaces through the act of painting itself.”