Victoria Ioudina — Les aigües que esculpeixen el foc
Some materials carry the traces of their own transformation. Along the beaches of the Maresme coast, Victoria Ioudina collects fragments of glass that have been eroded by the sea over time, gradually losing their original form before returning to the shore as small mineral formations. What was once an everyday object, discarded through human activity, finds a new existence through the movement of water and the passage of time.
This transformation lies at the heart of Les aigües que esculpeixen el foc, an audiovisual work that explores our relationship with the landscape and proposes alternative ways of observing matter. Through images captured with a camera and microscope, Ioudina examines the surfaces of glass, revealing a universe of textures and forms ordinarily invisible to the naked eye. The microscopic scale transforms our perception: the smallest details take on the vastness of a landscape, while erosion emerges as a record of time inscribed upon matter.
The visual dimension finds its counterpart in a sound composition drawn from the artist's own bodily processes. Her breathing, digestion, and internal sounds merge with mineral imagery, establishing a correspondence between the human body and the rhythms of nature. This relationship suggests a perspective in which landscape becomes more than something we contemplate, unfolding instead as an intimate and sensory experience.
As Marta Azparren observes in the accompanying curatorial text, "the microscopic approach proposed by the artist in her audiovisual work offers us a humble observation (humus), with the scale of dust as a reminder." This way of seeing brings us closer to a natural world that exists beyond our habitual perception and the temporal scales that shape human experience.
A spiritual dimension also emerges throughout Ioudina's research. Azparren describes her visual universe as "a translucent temple of nature made from fragments of landscape," where eroded matter and light evoke a form of contemplation approaching the sacred. A sensibility that the artist herself captures in a single phrase: "cathedrals are unnecessary when the sea exists."
Les aigües que esculpeixen el foc invites us to linger over what time transforms and the sea returns, recognising within the smallest fragments the memory of a landscape in a constant state of becoming.
Victoria Ioudina | Les aigües que esculpeixen el foc
LOOP City Screen 2026
LAB36 · Mezzanine, Galeria SENDA, Barcelona
Opening: November 12, 2026