Alba Urquia

Installation consisting in a series of 18 stone lithographs hung on the wall and 4 boulders of different sizes in front of them.

Alba Urquia (Barcelona,1997) received a BA(Hons) from the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, in 2019. She first learnt about printmaking processes at LCC and trained to become a technician in print. She was awarded a Pilar Juncosa and Sotheby's grant to work at the printmaking workshops of Joan Miró in Mallorca in 2019.

She became a key holder at Thames-Side Print Studio in 2021 and has exhibited across the UK since. Urquia's work has been shown at Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair (2021 and 2022), ASC Gallery (2023), Southwark Park Galleries (2022 and 2023), Fen Ditton Gallery (2023) in Cambridge shortlisted for the Contemporary Print Prize, at Spike Gallery in Bristol (2022), Pump House Gallery (2021) and AMP Studios (2020-2021).

Urquia presented her academic paper 'Bread, Print and Freedom' at IMPACT 12 (2022), an international printmaker's conference organised by the University of West England, Bristol. She has also attended Taller La Madriguera which is an artist residency in Barcelona in 2021 and 2022.

Urquia during the production of her largest boulder for the installation "A face that toils so close to stones"

My work explores matters related to existentialism and identity, the absurd, and the human condition. In a nutshell: who we are and why we are (here).

In my practice process and concept go hand in hand and I believe that the making is as relevant as the finished piece. Lengthy processes give me time to shape ideas, repetition allows me to explore the absurdity of our existence and working three-dimensionally helps me reflect the gravity of our condition. All in all, I am a printmaker convinced that spending enough time with limestones, will eventually turn me into one.

My recent body of work has been influenced majorly by Albert Camus’ interpretation of the Myth of Sisyphus, Jean-Paul Sartre's ideas on the transcendence of our being, and the body-mind dilemma.

"A face that toils so close to stones, is already stone itself."

This quote by Camus has been fundamental to articulate the body of work that I developed during my last year at the RCA.

Mimicking Sisyphus perpetual struggle to push a rock uphill, I strived to make a boulder my size. Each iteration was an attempt to reach my own top of the hill, that is why I regard each "boulder" as an "ascension" followed by a number -the times I tried to build one-.

The making process became a performance of what it takes to become stone myself, experimenting with different materials, finishes and scale each time. This body of work is a never-ending piece, a lifetime work in progress, just like Sisyphus eternal punishment, there are endless attempts, and due to its performatic nature, it might never be completed.

Ascension I

Ascension II

Ascension IV

Ascension V

Medium:

Paper maché, expanding foam, carborundum, pva, acrylic paint and lithographs on Japanese paper.

Size:

20 to 150cm in diameter

This collection of lithographs completes the boulders created for "A face that toils so close to stones...".

Once again the repetition of a -perhaps- absurd task, and physically demanding process brings me closer to this transmutation. When transferring the body parts to the surface of the stone, the skin becomes that of the limestone. Lithographic reticulations and a grainy grease-attracting areas are the new epidermis. I am that which I do: my hands get shaped by the irregular contour of each limestone, my back hurts from bowing to the stone, my legs get sturdy after all the graining, and my arms are constantly soar, like a latent indicator that the transmutation is about to take place.

How much time do I have before I become stone myself?

“One sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it and push it up a slope a hundred times over, one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay covered mass, the foot wedging it the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands.(...) A face that toils so close to stone is already stone itself”

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

Stones nº 3 / 10 / 15 / 21 / 22

Stone nº 13

Stone nº 9

Stone nº 20

Stone nº16

Stone nº 19

Medium:

Stone lithographs

Size:

11 x 9cm (smallest), 76x56cm (largest)

boulder installation sculpture sisyphus stone

This artefact consists of a Jesmonite box with an engraved title in its lid that reads "how I became who I am", and 10 meters of typewritten Kitakata paper.

The text is a journal of my transmutation into stone in the shape of an ancient worn out object containing primordial knowledge. It describes the steps I take to create the boulders for "A face that toils so close to stones" and the lithographs for "Is already stone itself" in addition to the reflections I came up with during the making process. Writing this publication served me to monitor my progress as well as how I endured such physical work, my commitment to the medium and each stage of the transmutation. I believe it narrates who I am, in as much as how those tasks shaped me the way I am now. In a nutshell: the narration of a stone's erosion through time.

Edition of 5

“By the end of this journey, I will have spent so much time with the limestone, that I will resemble one. My hands, and arms will be a portrait of my endurance, as it will be reflected on my face and my back, and the strong feet that supported me. I will proof once again, my life-time commitment to the medium and to the printing press. I will become that which I do. I am my struggle, I am stone myself.”

Fragment of "How I became who I am"

“By the end of this journey, I will have spent so much time with the limestone, that I will resemble one. My hands, and arms will be a portrait of my endurance, as it will be reflected on my face and my back, and the strong feet that supported me. I will proof once again, my life-time commitment to the medium and to the printing press. I will become that which I do. I am my struggle, I am stone myself.” Fragment of 'How I became who I am'

Medium:

Jesmonite box and 10 meters of typewritten Kitakata roll

Size:

15 x 10 x 9cm

existentialism identity publication stone transmutation

This diptych symbolises the universal relation between one and one's own existence. The circle represents the struggle inherent to human condition: to exist and find meaning to existence. It is depicted as a circle in an attempt to mimic Sisyphus' rock, which is used in the myth as a metaphor of the struggle.

In the first print, the struggle is bigger than the entity, the individual is completely overtaken by the weight of its own condition.

In the second print, the entity is physically over the struggle, it has come to terms with the nature of their relation: the struggle is fundamental to its existence, one simply needs to live with it.

It took me a while to be who I am... – 110x75cm Algraphy and goauche on Kitakata paper

...But I am – 110 x 75cm Algraphy and gouache on Kitakata paper

Medium:

Algraphy and gouache

Size:

110x75cm each

camus existentialism identity lithography sisyphus struggle

This print initiated the body of work that explores the relation between the human condition and its meaning. The circle symbolises Sisyphus' rock, a metaphor used in the myth to talk about the struggle that it is to exist.

“I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step towards the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks towards the laris of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.” - 'The Myth of Sisyphus' by A. Camus

This quote describing Sisyphus' descent is nothing else but the realisation that the struggle is fundamental to existence, that there is not one without the other. Accepting this condition and mutual dependency is the only way out.

Medium:

Algraphy and chine collé

Size:

45 x 36

algraphy camus existence existentialism lithograph meaning sisyphus struggle

These ceramics are the conclusive piece of the Body as Vessel, a body of work that I developed during my first year at the RCA where I explored the "vessel" as a metaphor of the body considered in phenomenology a tool to explore and interact the material world around us.

Existence is illusory or it is eternal.

This quote by Camus proposes two ways to understand existence as we know it -in a physical realm-: a shared illusion, a visual trick upon which we all agreed, or a temporal stage of an immortal condition.