Ambush #14: Ester Partegàs

Researching the precarious and uneven lives of objects and bodies—the behavior of spaces and their asymmetrical power relations—Ester Partegàs's sculptural work is nourished by encounters and modifications: it grafts, assembles, repositions, and mutates. Within the framework of the Ambushes program, the artist initiates processes of recording, transferring, and interpreting the materiality of Eina Bosc through modeling and frottage. Inspired by the concept of Spolia Romana—the practice of moving elements from one context to another—Ambush #14 focuses on “the parts of the building that seem ignored, underused, or hidden, questioning the thin line that separates ruin, residue, uselessness, and neglect.” Through a collective exercise in exploration, the participants exhume and reproduce these fragments. The workshop is accompanied by a process of reflection and the generation of collective narratives, which are also grafted onto the space through the choral invention of new words, molded in plaster. Their introduction into the space explores, thus, possible dialogues between language, architecture, and sculpture.

Ester Partegàs (La Garriga,1972) reproduces and recombines low-cost materials in hand-built sculptures that focus attention on the systems of value with which we live, while also drawing on her personal experiences, and effects of disjunction and dislocation. She holds an MFA in Sculpture, Universitat de Barcelona (1996) and Diploma in Multimedia Arts, Universität Der Künste Berlin (1998). Her recent shows include CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco (2025 two-person), Ballroom Marfa (2024 two-person), TEA Tenerife (2023), Palazzo Esposizioni, Rome (2023), NoguerasBlanchard, Madrid (2022 solo), Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (2021), Essex Flowers (2021 two-person), Pure Joy, Marfa TX (2020, solo), The Drawing Center, NY (2019). In 2026, CA2M (Móstoles-Madrid) in conjunction with Es Baluard Museu d’Art Contemporani, Palma de Mallorca, will present a two-part mid-career survey exhibition. Selected awards include Rome Prize, American Academy in Rome (2022); VI Catalina d’Anglade Award (2023); Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship (2014), Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2004). Residencies include Chinati Foundation, MacDowell, and Drawing Center NY. She has taught at Yale School of Art (2006 & 2009); Skowhegan (2009), Virginia Commonwealth University (2011-2015), and since 2016 Parsons School of Design. Based in New York since 1997, she is a part-time resident of Marfa (Texas), and Barcelona.