About

About

“Marta Troya is a Spanish visual artist born in 1995. Marta studied Fine Art and History of Art at Kingston School of Art (London) and she obtained a scholarship to study Sculpture for six months in the Central Academy of Fine Arts (Beijing, China). In 2018, she graduated from the Royal College of Art, where she did a Masters in Painting.

Marta combines age-old craft skills with contemporary techniques and subjects. The artist takes delight in working with her hands and has spent extended periods of time learning and creating alongside artisans and craftspeople from across the world. In 2015, Marta was awarded the Stanley Picker Gallery Travel Award to spend several months living with an indigenous family of weavers in Calicut, India, with whom she learnt about traditional loom weaving and immersed herself in the life of people who work in this tradition. Since then, Marta’s work is partly focused on redeeming, respecting and honouring artisan work and indigenous people’s knowledge. In order to pass on what she has been taught, Marta teaches workshops to a contemporary audience to whom she expresses the urgency of taking back artisan practices and having a creative outlet. She also organises workshops for Sian Huertas, a local spinner and dyer in her region that is 70+ years old.

Marta’s artwork pushes the boundaries of ancient craft practices by using contemporary subjects and blending a broad range of mediums, where tapestry, ceramics, print and painting can all coexist. Her artistic language is built around a deep fascination for age-old mediums and the natural world, human psychology and healing. In her practice, Marta tries to stitch back the divisions that are being experienced in our current society: our relationship with nature, the universe, each other and our bodies. Through her creativity, the artist hopes to regain a sense of wholeness in her life and she hopes the same for the viewer.

In her pieces, crafts skills are blended with each other, uniting traditions that would usually be separated. An etching hangs inside a tapestry wall piece and a ceramic object is stitched onto a fabric collage, for instance. The fusion between materials brings the artist a great sense of freedom and openness, which is connected to her extensive travel experience and a desire to explore outside of her region, country and comfort zones. 

Marta intends to convey a sense of inclusivity, flexibility, groundedness and grace through her slow and tactile creative process, which uses mostly organic and vegetal materials. There’s a real intimacy with the materiality of each piece and this invites the viewer to explore the deeply personal themes that she touches on. The subject matter of the work is inspired from her own story and her interest in the study of the occult, astrology, herbal healing and dream interpretation. Having used art since an early age as a way to process her father’s suicide and her mother’s cancer, Marta believes that art has a deeply therapeutic effect. She shows that art and life are inextricably entangled and she sees her practice as the place to return to in order to process her experiences and express her inner world.

Marta is influenced by artists such as Kiki Smith, Maja Ruznic, Emma Talbot, Sheila Hicks, Hilda Af Klint, Belkis Ayon, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Antoinette Lubaki and Simone Fattal. Her work has been featured in individual and group exhibitions in London, Beijing and Spain, and she has been selected to be an artist in residence in distinct spaces in London, Los Angeles, India, Beijing, Morocco, Portugal and Spain.”