Àngels Ribé

ÀNGELS RIBÉ

Barcelona, Spain, 1943

Àngels Ribé belongs to a generation of artists that initiated their artistic practice in the late sixties, a time of deep political and social changes. The work of art leaves the category of autonomous aesthetic entity that had held during modernity to open up to a process of dematerialization and socialization that fosters new relationships with the viewer, the artistic institution and the market.

Her practice, considered within the international scene as an essential part for the understanding of conceptual art, ranges from the use of drawing to performance, passing through sculpture, photography and installation.

Ribé began her production at the end of the sixties with actions, installations and performances with body and space as protagonists. Between 1966 and 1969 she lived in Paris, where she studied sociology and ceramics, and worked as an assistant for the artist Piotr Kowalski. In 1972 she moved to Chicago and New York, where she exhibited alongside artists such as Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, John Baldessari, Hans Haacke, Gordon Matta-Clark, Martha Wilson or Hanna Wilke. In the eighties she returned to her hometown, Barcelona. It should be mentioned, that her artistic practice was closely linked to the gender struggle during the 70s, a time in which the creative work made by women was still not very visible.

From the beginning, Ribé’s work sought to overcome minimalist logics by using her own body and exploring urban and nature space through various ephemeral actions, thus contributing to the dematerialization of the artistic object. In fact, the artist’s relationship with nature is not trivial; it is no longer a way of looking at the landscape, but a way of conceiving it as part of oneself. The role of photography has been as well of great relevance in her career, using it either as a visual record of her actions and performances, or as an instrument to catch her gaze.

Àngels Ribé has been awarded the National Prize for Plastic Arts 2019 and the honorary prize at the GAC Awards in recognition of her career. Furthermore, she has been the only Spanish artist to exhibit in such prestigious places such as London’s Whitechapel Gallery, with the exhibition ‘Adventures of the Black Square: Abstract Art and Society 1915-2015’, curated by Iwona Blazwick (2015).