MasterClass #11 MAP | ‘WORD WORK WORLD’ by Holga Méndez

Thursday, 10th April 2025, at 4pm, in FBAUP’s South Pavilion Auditorium

WORD WORK WORLD by Holga Méndez
Moderated by Teresa Almeida

In WORD WORK WORLD I will try to do an exercise of nearness to my creative process.
How do I develop my research in the artistic practice?
What does artistic practice mean to me?
How do I approach this process?
Modes of making. Modes of thinking. Modes of being.
My first need is the word. My first limit is the word.
I need that container to know what I am thinking. How am I thinking? Where, why and what for?
To talk about the relevance of the word in the initial’s moments and along the artistic work.
Words move and shape my artistic practice, my attitude and way of being in the artistic process.
With words, among words, towards the world.
Words as a material, as a framework to understand what surrounds me.
Words to work with things, sounds, material or immaterial world.
With/in world I want to talk about space and time shared in a vital wandering that allows me to connect with the world, with the other –animal, mineral or vegetable.
Life is set somewhere. People have to live somewhere. To sleep somewhere. To work somewhere.
Thinking and writing as actions and acts of proximity.
Actions and words go hand in hand in a situated and context-based artistic research.
Where are the words?
NO IDEAS BUT IN THINGS (William Carlos Williams)
bridge, road, air, window, chair, pen, paper, breath, thought
words, words, words surround us everywhere

Organised by Master in Fine Arts (MAP), FBAUP

BIO

Holga Méndez is an interdisciplinary artist with a PHD in Fine Arts (2006) from the University of Vigo (Spain). Currently, she is working as a permanent professor in Fine Arts at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). Additionally, she is a co-founder of Geografía Poética –a cultural and ecosocial project located in rural areas. She is also a visiting researcher at the Research Institute in Art, Design and Society (i2ADS) since 2022. She was granted with a research stay from the Spanish Ministry of Universities during 2022-2024 at the i2ADS to carry out the artistic project Peninsula. Cartographies of Distance, where she worked with a wide range of interdisciplinary approaches and concepts like between or in-between, limits and borders, ecosystems and biodiversity. The plural and necessarily fragmentary about the artistic practice turn into a sort of palimpsest, of soundtrack, of visual essay, in which no otherness seems unfamiliar.