FONS ÀUDIO #25

Eulàlia Valldosera began her career as an artist in Spain in the mid-eighties, a time when the creative euphoria of a brand new democracy coexisted with the conservatism and contradiction of a society that had not yet shaken off the years of silence and repression.

Against the backdrop of an international art scene dominated by painting (Barceló, the Italian Transavantgarde, German Neo-expressionism, etc.) and the primacy of the artistic object as currency, Valldosera developed a series of processual practices in which performance rubs shoulders with action and installation, generating alternative spaces for resistance, experimentation and reflection.

Valldosera has focused her conceptual work on the body and self-representation, but also on human perception. Her works use lights, shadows, mirrors and multiple projections in a visual investigation of gender, domestic space and the archetypes of femininity, often through one of its central metaphors: cleaning.

From the nineties onwards, light became a key element in her work. By combining projections with simple, everyday objects, she manages to create large-scale installations that suggest stage sets and have a magical effect. Similarly, she uses photography and video in works that re-examine the spectator’s relationship with objects and with other people. Valldosera’s contribution to the language of contemporary sculpture has made her one of the most internationally renowned Catalan conceptual artists.

Since the nineties, Eulàlia Valldosera has participated in many biennials, in cities such as Gwangju in South Korea (1995), Sydney (1996), Manifesta I in Rotterdam (1996), SITE Santa Fe in Nuevo Mexico (1997), Istanbul (1997), Johannesburg (1997), Yokohama in Japan (2001), Venice (2001) and Sao Paulo (2003), among others. In 2001, Witte de With in Rotterdam and the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona organised a retrospective of her work, and in 2009 the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid organised a second retrospective.