Barcelona Design Week started this afternoon with the presentation of the FAD Art Awards, organized by the Association of Artists and Craftsmen of the FAD. In this 13th edition, 33 finalists have been chosen from more than two hundred works presented, with a strong presence of techniques and materials from the world of crafts applied to art, such as the use of textiles or ceramics.
The winning work, in an edition with a high level, is the one titled Still waters run deep, by Nina Murashkina. The jury evaluated the ceramic vases of the Ukrainian artist living in Barcelona “the formal forcefulness of the set, the clarity of the discourse, the look and the narrative about desire and the fusion of traditional techniques with a contemporary resolution.” Murashkina bases her work on “magical feminism,” a sensual and metaphorical world built on her own sexuality and her life experiences. The pink tones of these vases inspired by ancient Greece give a feeling of femininity and sweetness, but the plots are frankly daring and their detailed reading is a punch that calls the viewer to reflection.
The jury has also awarded mentions to two finalist works created by the Mallorcan Pere Ginard and the Madrid-born Concha Romeu López de Sagredo. Ginard, illustrator and filmmaker, draws with ink on paper in Les formes del món detailed and unusual series of miniatures through which characters, animals and “things” parade, a serial story that makes up an enchanted, diverse, unexpected world, an exuberant and encyclopedic taxonomy that refers to medieval bestiaries, catalogs of rarities or the first Aristotelian taxonomies that the jury has valued "for the tenacity and richness of his imaginative world collected in his artist's notebooks."
The work Ajuar, by Concha Romeu, has also been chosen as a finalist and its mention values “the subtlety, tenderness, care and attention when treating the process of healing grief through textiles.” After the death of her mother, the artist covered part of her trousseau with black stitches, like the sheet presented to the contest, dyed with mourning thread by thread.
In the 13th edition of these awards, which have the objective of disseminating and promoting the various expressions of contemporary art and recognize conceptual excellence, the quality of material work and the execution of techniques, textile art has an outstanding representation among the works presented. A vindication of the so-called minor arts, but also of the connoisseurs, the professionals and the producers, the artisans.
Apart from the three awards within the open call, three FAD Art recognitions were also awarded by the board of directors to as many artists with outstanding careers: Silvia Gubern, Patricia Dauder and Eva Fàbregas.
Silvia Gubern (1941) is a pioneer who has spent six decades in the fields of art and graphic, industrial and interior design. Her multidisciplinarity has materialized in paintings, collages, performances, videos, sculptures, painted glass, embroidery, among many other creative expressions. Her work runs through artistic languages such as pop art, informalism, figuration, conceptual art, installations, automatic drawing or poetry.
The visual creations and creative processes of Patricia Dauder (1973) seek to capture that which is extremely difficult to retain through images and forms that appear in drawings, films, fabrics, sculptures or photographs. Her work presents records, breaks, discolorations, marks and layers that demonstrate the idea of a trace as a manifestation of transience and offer an interesting interlocution between space and the viewer.
Eva Fàbregas (1988) works with soft and malleable materials seeking learning through touch and fingers, invoking a prelinguistic stage to imagine other possible bodies, other ways of feeling, caring and being in the world, in a balance between simplicity and complexity with a very powerful visual force.
The FAD Art Awards are organized by the Association of Artists and Artisans of the FAD (A-FAD), with the support of the Consorci de Comerç, Artesania i Moda de la Generalitat de Catalunya (CCAM), the collaboration of the Museo del Diseño de Barcelona and the impetus of the Design Hub Barcelona.
Participating in the ceremony were Carol Fleischman, president of A-FAD; Teresa Rosa Aguayo, member of A-FAD; Eva Blanes, general secretary of A-FAD, and María Luisa Samaranch, member of the FAD, who claimed art and crafts “as a crossroads, as a debate: artists and artisans who together question themselves and together propose. We take responsibility for reinforcing and energizing the relationship between the hand and the mind.”
In this edition, the jury was formed by the artist Stella Rahola Matutes; Sabel Gavaldon, curator of exhibitions and head of Macba's Public Programs; Rocío Santa Cruz, director of the RocíoSantaCruz Gallery and Arts Libris; Pere Parramon, writer, teacher and cultural manager, and Begoña Corzo, journalist of La Vanguardia.
The winning works, in addition to all those selected, can be seen until January 7, 2024 in The best design of the year, the FAD exhibition at the DHub–Disseny Hub Barcelona. It includes more than 400 projects and works, all of them winners or finalists of the awards for the different design disciplines organized by the FAD associations. The exhibition is divided into three areas: art; architecture and interior design, and graphic design and visual communication.
The exhibition setup, by architects Giovanna Giampetruzzi and Soledad Lanús, stands out for being a commitment to sustainability, with large reusable curtains made of biodegradable Endutex fabric, as well as reused exhibition furniture. The graphics have been carried out by the Como Design studio, and are characterized by the use of colored ribbons that cross the images, and which have also been transferred to the physical plane in the exhibition setup as support for posters and panels.
