Patricia Esquivias (b. Caracas, Venezuela, 1979) knows that there is no single correct history of any particular place, and that merely telling one story does not make it any more true than another. She focuses on the small histories that can be found on the edges of official Chronicles. When the two meet, it is the secondary, marginal stories that flourish, i.e. those to which no attention has previously been paid but which are trivial only in appearance. She builds new narratives from leftovers.
Esquivias explores past times and events, which she reconstructs in different directions through processes of exchange and listening. She opens up heterogeneous, hybrid, complex paths because, unlike sealed, official chronicles, living storytelling is always open and incomplete. Her earliest works are simple, narrative, audiovisual pieces in which she highlights how ideology is translated into cultural forms. For instance, her series 'Folklore', which she began in 2006, reviews how the official history of Spain is reflected in popular expressions. Links between form and ideology can also be seen in works such as 111-119 Generalissimo/ Castellana (2013), which is based on the history of a building constructed in Madrid in the heyday of developmentalism for the pro-Franco elites. Its external decor reflects the doctrine of the internationalisation plan designed by the Franco regime and stands alongside highly austere service areas. These traditional forms, which denote a system which is not only ideological but social in nature, are revisited later in works such as Walking Still (2014), themed around the drawings that decorate cement pavements in Colombia, in her photographic archive of Madrid plasterwork (2013-2016), which focuses on humble facades and on the ordinary workers who built them, and in Cardinal Cardon (2020), a video describing the transporting to Spain in 1992 of a giant Mexican cactus for the garden of the Mexico Pavilion of the Universal Expo in Seville. In recent years she has extended her work from video to traditional media such as mosaic and tapestry weaving, where results depend largely on the involvement of numerous collaborating workers, external voices and the links between them all.
Patricia Esquivias was born in Caracas in 1979 but grew up in Madrid, where her family moved in the early 1980s after living in various countries in Latin America. She trained in London at the Chelsea College of Art and Design (1997-1998) and at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (1998-2001), before furthering her studies at the California College of Arts (2005-2007). Together with curator Manuela Moscoso, she founded Los 29 Enchufes, an independent art venue in Madrid which operated from 2001 to 2009. Solo exhibitions of her work have been staged at the Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid, 2021), Stacion (Pristina, Kossovo, 2018), CA2M (Móstoles, 2016), MARCO (Vigo, 2013), the Kunsthalle Winterthur (Switzerland, 2013), the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, 2011), the Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2009) and White Columns (New York, 2008). She has also been featured in group exhibitions such as 'Querer parecer noche' ['Wishing to Seem like the Night'] at CA2M (Madrid, 2018), 'Arte y cultura en torno a 1992' ['Art & Culture Concerned with 1992'] at the CAAC (Seville, 2017), 'Ficciones y territorios. Arte para pensar la nueva razón del mundo' [Fictions & Territories: Art for Thinking of New Reasons for the World'] at the Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2016), 'Ir para volver, 12ª Bienal de Cuenca' ['Leaving only to Return. the 12th Cuenca Biennial'] (Ecuador, 2014), 'Objects in a Mirror are Closer than they Appear' at the Tate Modern (London, 2012), 'Report on Probability' at the Kunsthalle Basel (Basel, 2009), 'The Generational: Younger Than Jesus' at the New Museum (New York, 2009), 'Bending the Word', at the Berkeley Museum of Art (Berkeley, 2008), 'When Things Cast No Shadow, 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art' (Berlin, 2008) and 'Beyond Paradise' at the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, 2008), among others. Her works can be found in the collections of the La Panera Art Centre (Lérida), CA2M (Móstoles), the Reina Sofia (Madrid), the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris/ARC (Paris) and the CGAC (Santiago de Compostela).
Patricia Esquivias (b. Caracas, Venezuela, 1979) knows that there is no single correct history of any particular place, and that merely telling one story does not make it any more true than another. She focuses on the small histories that can be found on the edges of official Chronicles. When the two meet, it is the secondary, marginal stories that flourish, i.e. those to which no attention has previously been paid but which are trivial only in appearance. She builds new narratives from leftovers.
Esquivias explores past times and events, which she reconstructs in different directions through processes of exchange and listening. She opens up heterogeneous, hybrid, complex paths because, unlike sealed, official chronicles, living storytelling is always open and incomplete. Her earliest works are simple, narrative, audiovisual pieces in which she highlights how ideology is translated into cultural forms. For instance, her series 'Folklore', which she began in 2006, reviews how the official history of Spain is reflected in popular expressions. Links between form and ideology can also be seen in works such as 111-119 Generalissimo/ Castellana (2013), which is based on the history of a building constructed in Madrid in the heyday of developmentalism for the pro-Franco elites. Its external decor reflects the doctrine of the internationalisation plan designed by the Franco regime and stands alongside highly austere service areas. These traditional forms, which denote a system which is not only ideological but social in nature, are revisited later in works such as Walking Still (2014), themed around the drawings that decorate cement pavements in Colombia, in her photographic archive of Madrid plasterwork (2013-2016), which focuses on humble facades and on the ordinary workers who built them, and in Cardinal Cardon (2020), a video describing the transporting to Spain in 1992 of a giant Mexican cactus for the garden of the Mexico Pavilion of the Universal Expo in Seville. In recent years she has extended her work from video to traditional media such as mosaic and tapestry weaving, where results depend largely on the involvement of numerous collaborating workers, external voices and the links between them all.
Patricia Esquivias was born in Caracas in 1979 but grew up in Madrid, where her family moved in the early 1980s after living in various countries in Latin America. She trained in London at the Chelsea College of Art and Design (1997-1998) and at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (1998-2001), before furthering her studies at the California College of Arts (2005-2007). Together with curator Manuela Moscoso, she founded Los 29 Enchufes, an independent art venue in Madrid which operated from 2001 to 2009. Solo exhibitions of her work have been staged at the Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid, 2021), Stacion (Pristina, Kossovo, 2018), CA2M (Móstoles, 2016), MARCO (Vigo, 2013), the Kunsthalle Winterthur (Switzerland, 2013), the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, 2011), the Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2009) and White Columns (New York, 2008). She has also been featured in group exhibitions such as 'Querer parecer noche' ['Wishing to Seem like the Night'] at CA2M (Madrid, 2018), 'Arte y cultura en torno a 1992' ['Art & Culture Concerned with 1992'] at the CAAC (Seville, 2017), 'Ficciones y territorios. Arte para pensar la nueva razón del mundo' [Fictions & Territories: Art for Thinking of New Reasons for the World'] at the Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2016), 'Ir para volver, 12ª Bienal de Cuenca' ['Leaving only to Return. the 12th Cuenca Biennial'] (Ecuador, 2014), 'Objects in a Mirror are Closer than they Appear' at the Tate Modern (London, 2012), 'Report on Probability' at the Kunsthalle Basel (Basel, 2009), 'The Generational: Younger Than Jesus' at the New Museum (New York, 2009), 'Bending the Word', at the Berkeley Museum of Art (Berkeley, 2008), 'When Things Cast No Shadow, 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art' (Berlin, 2008) and 'Beyond Paradise' at the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, 2008), among others. Her works can be found in the collections of the La Panera Art Centre (Lérida), CA2M (Móstoles), the Reina Sofia (Madrid), the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris/ARC (Paris) and the CGAC (Santiago de Compostela).