Pía Sommer iN RESiDENCE at Institut Sants

Pía Sommer (Chile, 1981)

She works on matters related to sound and the visible. She is a poet, interdisciplinary artist and active participant in La Internacional Ruidísta. She has been invited to take part in numerous solo and group exhibitions, festivals, talks, readings and publications, as well as at galleries and museums in Latin American and European countries. She works primarily with media and tools such as voice, video, loudspeakers and graphic work, and in formats including installations, performances, video art and the use of new technologies. Action and collaborative work, as well as free improvisation, define much of the reflection and materialisation present in her work. In 2016, she formed a small band with Ferran Garcia: Utòpic_Ment_54. In 2018, her first monovolume, F.I.A.T. (2020), appeared in the En Vivo Collection of Festival PM – Chile.

Some of the venues where she has been invited to present her visual and sound work include Museu Picasso, Fundació Joan Miró, Convent de Sant Agustí, CCCB, Arts Santa Mònica, L’Estruch and Hangar in Barcelona; the VideoSur II exhibition at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, USA; and Galería Proyectista in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In Chile, she has presented her work at Galería Casa E, Sala Puntángeles, CNCA (Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes) in Valparaíso, Museo de la Solidaridad Arte Contemporáneo Salvador Allende, Perrera Art, Sala Juan Egenau at the University of Chile and MNBA (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes). She has undertaken residencies in the Balearic Islands and Sabadell, and has presented various works at the Tsonami International Sound Art Festival in 2007, 2013 and 2015, as well as at Störung, Fundación Phonos, CurtCircuit Fest and Gràcia Territori Sonor in Barcelona, among others. She is also part of the retrospective 10 años: Arte Sonoro en Chile and was invited to Artium Museum in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque Country, in 2021.

She has published the poetry plaquettes Frecuentemente Isla (2015), Aéreos (2017) and Terrenales (2018). She is included in the short-story anthology Uno más ocho, published by Reservoir Books, Penguin Random House. She was Arts and Culture Editor at the newspaper El Ciudadano between 2003 and 2018. Her long poem El Frente de los Geranios was published in Málaga in 2018 (Cuadernos Imperdonables, master printer Francisco Cumpián). Korowai (2019) is a poem in several languages and the first in her career to include a fragment in Catalan. She is included in the anthology Mujeres Dadá, Ediciones Canibal (2021). She has recently published the fanzine Dónde decir – poemas audibles and Notas de existencia –muestrario de suelos– (2022). Her graphic poems have been published in an edition of the German magazine Die Horen and in the bilingual anthology PO-EX.

The most recent poetry festivals at which she has appeared include Barcelona Poesia, Poesia i més, Vociferi Festival de Poesia de València, La Muga Caula, Expandible Poesía Transdisciplinar in Mexico, the Euskadi Biennial of Experimental Poetry and Festival PM Chile, among others.

She holds a degree in Arts (IA / P.U.C.V., Chile), is a Cultural Manager (P.U.C., Chile), and has a Master’s degree in Sound Art, Fine Arts, Architecture and Music, as well as a Master’s degree in Artistic Production and Research (UB, Spain). Since 2019, she has been working on her doctoral thesis, La voz fijada, as part of the Advanced Studies in Artistic Practices and Research programme at the University of Barcelona.

She currently writes and conducts research from her place of residence in Mataró.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE PROJECT

• Explore the 2022–2023 edition blog
• Pía Sommer’s website
• Final project: Som paisatge
• Project report (PDF – 4.07 MB)