Liste Year
Year of Birth
Country of Birth
Presented by
2021
1991
Argentina
PIEDRAS
Clara Esborraz (b. 1991, Rafaela, Argentina ) has a degree in Fine Art from the National University of Rosario.
In 2015 she received a grant from the National Fund of Art to take part in the workshop “La Basurita”, she took part in the 2017 Artists Programme at the Torcuato Di Tella University and in 2018, she was invited to the URRA Tigre International Residency.
She recently received Acquisition Prize Salón Nacional de Rosario for her series “Se siente como entrenamiento’’ in the 73° National Salon of Rosario, the Stimulus Prize in the Visual Arts’ Contest of 2018, of National Arts’ Fund, and a Scholarship of Travelling for Artists of Alec Oxenford’s Collection, 2019.
Her work has featured in numerous solo and collective exhibitions, most recently: Sucia y desprolija (Dirty and Sloppy); PIEDRAS (2019-2020), La hora rota (The Broken Hour); Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art (2019), Geometría Pueblo Nuevo (New Town Geometry), PIEDRAS (2018); Dibujo para hablar más lento (I Draw to Speak More Slowly), Centro Cultural de la Memoria Haroldo Conti (2018); Supersimétrica (Supersymmetry), Matadero Madrid (2018) and La Torpeza Emocional: Ensayo I (Emotional Clumsiness: Rehearsal I), PIEDRAS (2017).
My research focuses on drawing, not only as a medium to represent an idea but also as a practice that produces ideas itself. I'm interested in the sensibility, accessibility and political agency of “common materials”, such as ballpoint pens, bookcel papers, photocopies, and napkins, and its contrast with the tools considered “noble” by Art History.
In my latest series of works, I explore the possibilities of drawing as a vehicle for self -understanding. In this line of works reality and fiction get entangled by mixing biographical information and, sometimes, performatic situations that involve me and others. I am mainly interested in the use of the body and clothing as mutability tools for the exploration of gender in an expansive way, as well as the use of self-portrait serves me to unfold myself into many, investigating the representation and deformation of my own image.
Through the construction of images, texts, and actions I seek to discover the limits between figuration and abstraction, as well as between the femenine and the masculine, pursuing ambiguous and inexplicable forms.
CLARA ESBORRAZ AT LISTE 2021: MIRROR
In this series of drawings, male clothing becomes the language to explore gender performativity. Through the use of letters, doodles and erasures, I question how signs are inscribed in the body, defining and redefining our identity. In MIRROR, drawing is a state of determination and mutability.
CLARA ESBORRAZ'S LATEST PROJECTS
Liste Year
Year of Birth
Country of Birth
Presented by
2020
1991
Argentina
PIEDRAS
ABOUT CLARA ESBORRAZ'S WORK
Clara Esborraz (b. 1991 in Rafaela, lives and works in Buenos Aires - Argentina) has a degree in Fine Art from the National University of Rosario. In 2015 she received a grant from the National Fund of Art to take part in the workshop “La Basurita”, she took part in the 2017 Artists Programme at the Torcuato Di Tella University and in 2018, she was invited to the URRA Tigre International Residency.
She recently received Acquisition Prize Salón Nacional de Rosario for her series “Se siente como entrenamiento’’ in the 73° National Salon of Rosario, the Stimulus Prize in the Visual Arts’ Contest of 2018, of National Arts’ Fund, and a Scholarship of Travelling for Artists of Alec Oxenford’s Collection, 2019.
Her work has featured in numerous solo and collective exhibitions, most recently: Sucia y desprolija (Dirty and Sloppy); PIEDRAS (2019-2020), La hora rota (The Broken Hour); Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art (2019), Geometría Pueblo Nuevo (New Town Geometry), PIEDRAS (2018); Dibujo para hablar más lento (I Draw to Speak More Slowly), Centro Cultural de la Memoria Haroldo Conti (2018); Supersimétrica (Supersymmetry), Matadero Madrid (2018) and La Torpeza Emocional: Ensayo I (Emotional Clumsiness: Rehearsal I), PIEDRAS (2017).
My investigation centers in drawing, not as a discipline to represent an idea but as a practice that produces ideas in itself. I mainly work with non-noble materials: sulphite paper, napkins, pencil and pen. I’m interested in their sensibility, such as its accessibility and, therefore, its political character. I’m currently exploring the possibilities of drawing as a tool for self understanding and developing a group of works in which reality and fiction get entangled by mixing drawing and performance.
CLARA ESBORRAZ AT LISTE SHOWTIME
Shaving the back of my head (2020) is a series that functions as a continuation of Dirty and Sloopy, a solo show by Clara that took place in the gallery in 2019. This project was displayed in two rooms. In the first one, seven drawings portrayed the artist´s studio & bedroom, occupied by a group of girls, playing different situations. In the second one, the artist and a group of actresses remained in real time in that studio & bedroom, embodying a durational performance.
After going through the intensity of this performing experience, in 2020 Clara began a new project, also situated in a space in which she sleeps and works. Here, confinement is exacerbated, as well as night and those bodies unsettlement. In this series, a group of characters cohabit with their dreams and their nightmares, entering a hallucinatory state in which reality and fiction are entangled, while making space for the unknown.
Untitled from Shaving the back of my head series, 2020
120 x 80 cm | 47 x 31 ¹/₂ in
Through the use of ballpoint pens and paper as the only elements of this work, the series holds a reduced palette according to its specific brand of pens. Predominantly black, its combinations give these works a strong contrast between the light of its lines, its fluorescent colours which resemble some disco lightening, and the darkness of the room, in which the scene develops.
The bodies in which the artist portrays herself in this series of drawings, are multiple unfoldings, in sweaty bodies, and a series of extravagant haircuts and hairstyles, which reminds us of post punk. These bodies dig into the possibilities of representation and deformation in an image. The series explores the limits between abstraction and figuration, as well as feminine and masculine, while searching for inexplicable and ambiguous representations.
CLARA ESBORRAZ'S PREVIOUS WORKS
Dirty and sloppy, 2019-2020
Solo exhibition at PIEDRAS (Buenos Aires)
In “Dirty and Sloopy”, her individual show, Clara presents a fiction built upon drawings, who follow one after the other, in a bedroom. Installed in two separate rooms, at first sight, they can be distinguished thanks to the back room´s yellow floor. In the front room, seven drawings hung aligned. They function as a script or partiture of what is developing in the adjunct room. Naked women use panties, latex clothes and pink satin boots with high heels. These have been bought in Once neighbourhood.[1] They share a bath while drinking coffee and smoking fags. Girls hold on to their nakedness. They see ...
The Broken Hour, 2019
Solo exhibition, Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art
The Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art is pleased to present an exhibition by the young artist Clara Esborraz (Rafaela, Santa Fé, 1991) featuring a set of drawings made specifically for the show.
Produced with commonly found materials; ordinary biros and paper, Clara Esborraz's drawings depict scenes full of everyday objects and spaces that gradually expand into a surreal fantasy. Her images reshape reality into irrational situations where a tooth or kettle burst into tears and curtains start to sweat.
Thus a new space is created between their domestic nature ...
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ABOUT PIEDRAS
PIEDRAS is a contemporary art gallery located on the fourth floor of an early 20th´s century building in the neighborhood of Once, Buenos Aires (Argentina). The gallery today represents a small group of artists with a solid and constant career, for whom we are their first gallery, and with whom we work in permanent dialogue to promote the process of insertion in the local and international scene.
Our artists offer personal perspectives outside the dominant discourses. They are in dialogue with their context and generate dissonant voices about what it means to inhabit a body today. Each exhibition is designed as an open process where the experimental nature of the project prevails over its commercial potential. The program is scheduled as a dynamic field where a variety of proposals that often show interests related to gender, neoliberal economies and the power of the fiction in everyday life. The activities include individual and collective exhibitions, performances and one day shows as well as dances, karaokes and talks.
Since its beginnings in 2014, PIEDRAS establishes as an alternative space where the professionalism and the festive converge and relate, giving a new meaning to the galleristic project as an environment that celebrates the encounter and diversity.
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