Marta Moriarty

Marta Moriarty is a curator, researcher, artist and gallerist based in Madrid. She has a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and has studied philosophy, journalism and art history in Madrid and in Naples. Over the last decades, she has founded, owned and directed Slowtrack, Vacío 9 and Moriarty, three well-known art galleries and dynamic centers of cultural activity in Madrid. While working with many Spanish and international artists in her galleries, she curated several exhibitions and biennales abroad, such as Bienal Internacional del Deporte en el Arte (BIDA), where she curated four editions, or the Nit Niu in Mallorca. Since the late eighties, she has been interested in and occasionally working with African artists, but it is since 2010 that she focuses much of her work and research on Contemporary African Art and has helped introduce artists and artistic projects from the African continent to Spain and Europe. She maintains since then a close and fruitful working relationship with NIROX Foundation in South Africa as responsible for international planning, residency programs and artists exchanges. She also works for William Kentridge’s project The Centre for the Less Good Idea.

As a curator, some of her most recent exhibitions include “Miradas y Murmullos" by Margarita Argüelle at Intersticio gallery in Madrid (2021); “That Hidden Thread” at NIROX Sculpture Park in Johannesburg (2021); “Kintsugi Dinner Party” at Club Matador in Madrid (February 2021-February 2022); “Yamou, Deep inside” at Le Hangar in Marrakech (2019); “Africa, What Africa”, an exhibition and a series of lectures and panel discussions at Es Baluard–Museum of Contemporary Art of Palma in Mallorca (2018); and “Ashes”, a major project by Andy Goldsworthy in Villa Angostura in Patagonia (2018), with whom she has also developed projects in Cadiz, Cuenca and Mallorca.

As an artist, she has developed projects such as Sculpture to live in in Mallorca (2021), a series of video performances titled “Proyecto Après vous S1 and S2” (2020-21), and the works “Everything that seems pointless”, “Le dejeneur sans l’herbe”, “We live we choose" or "Tat Tvam Asi”, an installation at Convento de Santo Domingo in Pollensa inMallorca (2017), among others.

“Chronicles of Astonishment–An Abode in the Crowd” is a long-term multi faceted project in collaboration with Inés Muñozcano, with whom they have been working on various projects since 2013. It is part of a more comprehensive pursuit which combines in situ, analogical and digital research and walks in a sort of a 21st century flaneurism. The project includes its own ever-growing ‘archive of astonishment’ and a podcast named “Lo que te dije”.

Marta Moriarty is a participant of the Tailor-made Fellowships program on Οnassis AiR 2022-23.