Erizo poemático... I

Mar Arza (Castellón de la Plana, Spain, b. 1976) trained at the faculty of Fine Arts of Valencia and at the Carnegie Mellon School of Art in the United Kingdom, where she completed a Master’s degree in Sculpture, which earned her a scholarship from the Fundación Canyada-Blanch. In 2017, she received the DKV Award for the best emerging artist’s gallery exhibition in Catalonia (Resquicio at RocioSantaCruz). In 2013, she received the Guasch-Coranty prize at the Valls Biennale and the Arts Libris Award in Barcelona. Represented by RocioSantaCruz, Arza has participated in several international art fairs, such as ARCOmadrid, Untitled Miami Beach, and SP-Arte. She has been included in group exhibitions at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, Palazzo delle Arti Napoli, Villa Empain Brussels, Museo de Valls Tarragona, and at the Centre d’Art de les Terres de l’Ebre, among others Mar Arza is a sculptor of words that - meticulously disharmonized from their original stories - create new conceptual, verbal and plastic meanings. Through this non-writing, she rewrites manipulated books in search of an artistic lyricism. Her work integrates a debate between words and their sensitive and material dimension. With this intention, she chooses pages of books from which she meticulously dissects texts and phrases or emphasizes words that adopt a sculptural form.