laia moreto alvarado

In this project, Moreto emphasizes the arbitrariness of laws and the instability of systems of social order. To do this, she took her starting point from an old Quebec law, whose application led to the imprisonment of a young man, for throwing snowballs. The artist then recreated these balls using an artificial intelligence program (DALLE2). The dynamic revealed by the work reminds us that there are no fixed ethics, that the sense of innocence is subjective and that rules are susceptible to the influence of the emotions.

Video Link: https://youtu.be/olo7CCDjjUs This event centres on a series of performative actions, art in audio and video formats that reflect on captivity, authority and freedom. A performance is held in different locations throughout Barcelona by two artists who have experienced prison from the standpoint of seclusion and freedom. Both wear jewellery made from collections of keys attached to their wrists. By appropriating the arm movements of a traditional children's playtime activity, they create a live musical sounds that makes the keys ring. Beca  Roca Umbert 11.05.2023_Ciutat de Barcelona 2020. ICUB.

Sculpture. Paper and flowers. Project H is a series of urban-based actions that take place on city routes it centres on reviving the story of a wall painting by the artist Helios Gómez in the chapel of a prison in Barcelona, which was painted over for political reasons in order to hide it from view.

Working on it

This project is a cocreation with Sara S. It was presented in the Fundación Alfonso y Luz Castillo with the support of the Institut Ramon Llull. It is formulated with different artistic experiences such as photography, video, books and sculptures: visual and material pieces which have been exhibited both inside and outside Wad Ras prison, in Barcelona.

Laia Moreto Alvarado (2018). Installation. Different sizes and materials. This installation is made up of 4 elements: a pendulum made of burnt wood; a bullet converted into a feather; a broken mirror placed upside down; and a white card game printed in braille (each card brings a story of either side of the Spanish Civil War). This work reflects the silence with which this war has been inherited in family environments. Three generations later, many of those who lived it did not want to remember, and when they did, they found the war was perceived as something too distant for younger people.

 https://vimeo.com/283696305 Laia Moreto Alvarado, 2017. Sculpture-Installation. Glass and human breath.  The present work aims to show the traces left on us by the breathing of this close presence. It is a sculpture designed to contain human breath inside hundreds of tubular glass modules suspended in space. This material – light and almost as imperceptible as the misty air inside it – outlines the physical boundaries of a path that invites one to go along the whole interior of the set.This suggested walk, starting from an apparent solitude, is surrounded by the evocation of a breathing sound: the otherness is announced by the steam and by the absence of the one that causes it. As it bursts into space, the sculpture appears solid and firm even though its translucent slow breath evaporation may suggest fragility. Due to its quality of permeability with its surroundings, we are allowed to glimpse living traces among the lifeless matter inside the glass containers. Keywords: glass, sculpture, the other, sound, breath, journey.

  Laia Moreto Alvarado, 2017   Action-sculpture-photograph. Different sizes and materials. Smoke trapped in glass.                                                                                              The act of giving is universal and what is given serves as an anchor point to reflect on whether such act is spare, a delivery, or rather an inversion; or on how what is material ties two entities together. This artwork begins with the action of burning gifts received. Hot glass with the resulting ashes is poured into a mould that registers the act of giving. Thus, the gesture becomes object and what is material becomes intangible.Key words: immateriality, objecting, gesture, giving.

see video Laia Moreto Alvarado, 2016 Sculpture-Installation. Glass and steel wires. Set of 3 modules of 40x40x2,5 cm.   There is a pleasant rest but also a more exhausting one: the inaction that follows disorientation, constant changes, and the excess of transitoriness. The sculptural installation Uncertainties shows a set of suspended glass chairs that invite, like a mirage, to an unattainable rest. It is composed by 3 floating, mobile, fragmented chairs. As in a waiting room, they are placed in parallel making it impossible for the occupiers to meet one another frontally. Despite the solidity of each piece of furniture - and the fact that their different heights do not allow collisions among them- the seeming instability of its material questions the security and relationships amongst the potential occupiers of such space. Key words: uncertainty, installation, glass, suspension.

Laia Moreto Alvarado, 2015-2022

Black and white photograph. Cotton paper. 60x60 cm.

Series of portraits which can only be perceived from physical proximity and that, by contrast, appear as a dark spot when looked at from a distance. The quality of darkness conditions one to approach art corporally in contrast to the current context, which leaves a world with an excess of distant, virtual and anonymous images. People are portrayed in the company of someone else. That reveals and stresses a bond that allows to see the individual as a being with an inescapable relationship with the other; the presence of someone who is needed and breaks all expectations. An existing bond such as the one found -more indirectly- between the author and the recipient of an image and that, within the darkness of this artwork, is revealed with the need to position the creative part in a closer and more binding way. Key words: veiling, unveiling, naked, proximity, the other

  Laia Moreto Alvarado, 2013-2017 Black and white photograph. Series of 16 diptychs. Cotton paper. Different sizes.   Photographic series made up from diptychs that dig into the signs of the actions of the other within the terrain vague. The set of images goes through the place looking always at the space forward and backwards in order to gain access to the place of this other being -absent or present- without, however, being able to unravel it. Key words: terrain vague, shot, reverse shot, presence, absence, landscape.

Laia Moreto Alvarado, 2017 Action-sculpture. Different sizes and materials. The presence of a signal placed by a being into a landscape suggests the absence of the one who places it, and the presence of the one receiving it. It is also indicative of an inhabited and shared place. This display is a collection of material signals created from a sound graph in order to catch the viewer’s eye and attention. These signals originate from the recording of the sounds of the same landscape they are meant for. Signals which are distributed in a single space in order to bring out awareness of the sound within the urban and natural space, and to associate them to both loneliness and human agglomeration. This work is divided into four parts which are at the same time unified in two big blocks: Noise, including “Dissonance” and “Echo” and Silence, formed by “Sound” and “Stillness”. Key words: urban art, nature, noise, silence

Laia Moreto Alvarado. Photography. 2013.                                                                                This project - structured in three chapters: Sense, Distance and Limit- presents a creative act on the perceptions of a little girl with multiple disabilities. A space that is accessed both from reality and photographic fiction through the testimony of her environment and also the author’s dual gaze. Key words: sense, distance, limit, fiction, reality, health problems