Itziar Barrio’s interest and motivation for creating art springs from a personal need to react to and interact with reality. She has arrived at the understanding that human reality is not completely visceral or absolute, but it is an intricate psychological and intellectual construction, ever being re-created. When Barrio chooses an image, she takes into consideration not only the conscious worlds associated with the image but also the subconscious, societal, and sensational associations. She approaches the icon as a concept by maneuvering it through various abstract worlds and using many media, such as sculpture, painting, mural, and video animation. The repetition and extension of her original icons intomurals, animations, and drawings exemplifies the relationship that society has with everyday objects as recurring icons, whether those be practical objects embedded in our lives or abstract advertisement media creations. In this way she intends to bring up questions that are not overtly social or political, but that deal with the tendency of the human mind to create iconic and associative characters out of its surroundings and the effects of those associations on society.
Itziar Barrio (born 1976 in Bilbao) currently lives and works in New York City. She combines a wide range of media spanning the gamut of drawing, photography, video, animation and installation. She has been featured in solo shows internationally, including ARTIUM Museum, Spain; HVCCA, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art and White Box, New York; Agenzia04 Gallery, Italy; Weekend Gallery and The Kunsthaus Tacheles, Berlin; Sala Libre Completo, Barcelona; and Catalogo General Gallery, Bilbao. She has also
participated in group exhibitions worldwide, including New Museum Festival of Ideas for a New City, New York; Cervantes Institute, New York; Now or Never, Bogotá; Havana Biennial, Cuba; Pist Space, Istanbul; Art for Art’s Sake, Italy; Gdansk Academy of Arts, Poland; Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, New York; 404 International Festival Postelectronic Art, Italy; The New Vision Cinema Series, New York; Gallerie Augenblick-raum für gegenwartskunst, Berlin; Paolo Boselli Gallery, Brussels; Art Tech Media International Forum, Spain; La Casa de America, Madrid; and Sala Rekalde, Bilbao. Itziar Barrio has been the recipient of many grants, awards and nominations from major foundations and institutions including: Brooklyn Arts Council, First Prize Ertibil, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Spanish Ministry of Culture, Consulate General of Spain in New York, Basque Government Ministry of Culture, Bizkaia Executive Council, Gure Artea Biennial Prize and the Iberoamerican Videocreation Prize, MUSAC (Leon). She has been lecturing at Parsons, The New School for Design, Long Island University, Westchester Community College among others.