SET ESPAI D’ART, Valencia
Laia Abril, Olga Diego
Through the works of Laia Abril and Olga Diego, SET ESPAI D’ART’s booth for Art-o-rama 2024 is a plea in favor of those multiple and imprecise bodies which for centuries have borne the burden of incomprehension and whose existence has opened the door for these undefined places to be something more than a utopia.
The project is developed around a performable sculpture “Female Urinal” by Olga Diego, hanging from the ceiling in the center of the booth. Stemming from this piece, on the black-painted back wall of the booth, the gallery displays the installation “Lobismuller” by Laia Abril (Barcelona, 1986). In this project, Abril reviews the history of one of the most enigmatic Spanish criminals of the 19th century, Manuel Blanco Romasanta, and, from a gender perspective, reflects on the prejudices of “fear of the other”, evoking a possible intersexuality of the subject, who “could have felt alienated and marginalized to the point of seeing themselves as a monster.
Perhaps enough to actually become one?” In the pieces and videos by Olga Diego (Alicante, 1969), the main characters are presented as beings whose gender is difficult to determine. Diego reviews the entire artistic tradition in history to make us doubt, think and observe that the same figure can be, at the same time, many things. In her performative videos, the artist modifies her rebellious body as a place of resistance, disrupting regulations and questioning the strict established rules, surpassing the limits of sexual identity to find a new territory of freedom.
