Martí arrives in Bilbao for an artistic residency. His clothes take up only a small part of the huge wardrobe in his new room. When he meets someone, the wardrobe gradually begins to fill up. But where did the emptiness go, the free space, the little corner of his own? Did the wardrobe swallow it all, or was it love?
In Spanish and Catalan with English subtitles.
Martí Madaula Esquirol is a visual artist and filmmaker based between Madrid and Barcelona. As the curator Alexandra Laudo describes: “A central aspect of Martí Madaula’s artistic practice, which is deployed in videos, publications, performances and installations, is the articulation of narratives in which writing and images are combined. Madaula focuses on everyday life, the construction of bonds, intimacy and affect, and engages these from a ne sensibility with a deeply personal poetics and an emphatic attention to what is simple but profound.”
Madaula’s first film, The Living Wardrobe, had its World Premiere at Visions du Réel 2024 and it has also been shown in major non-fiction film festivals such as Festival dei Popoli or the Kassel Documentary and Video Film Festival, among others. He has shown his work in solo exhibitions such as “L’Armari Vivent” (Prats Nogueras Blanchard, 2024), “Tough, Reliable and Almost Cuddly” (SITE 280 Gallery in Chicago, 2023), “To Recover the Bedsheets from Manchester” (Museum of Sabadell, 2021) or “Stronger than Air, Thinner than Ice” (Astronomical Observatory of UGent, 2019). He has also taken part in several group shows.
Martí Madaula Esquirol holds a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona, a Master of Visual Arts from the LUCA School of Arts of Ghent (Belgium) and an MFA in Film, Video, New Media, and Animation from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2019, he received the Extraordinary Prize of Fine Arts (University of Barcelona). In 2021, he was awarded a prestigious “la Caixa” Foundation fellowship to pursue his studies in the United States.