LAIA ABRIL

DOCUMENTING DIFFICULT SUBJECT MATTER

Today I sat in an online talk with contemporary artist and photographer, Laia Abril, as she discussed her recent projects that look more deeply into some very challenging subject matters. Her most recent project looks into Abortion; more specifically into what happens when there is a lack of access to abortions for women, in a project she calls ‘The History of Misogyny’. She explains she always starts her sensitive projects with deep research by looking into key details regarding the subject, but more importantly asks herself ‘What’s my role here? What’s my approach?’

She told us she was originally a Journalist, but had decided to she wanted to document stories of women who couldn’t have access to abortions, and wanted to travel to each of the countries where abortion is currently illegal, however it became apparent to her that this is something she could do because she didn’t have the resources to.

So, she began searching of key people with stories of not having access to safe abortions and used that as a way to search out individuals that she could use these experiences of to explore this topic but in a genuine manner. She said this was incredibly difficult to properly find due to the fact the a lot of these stories involve illegal activity or stories that were difficult to document.

She then began to explain how she used mixed media forms of exhibition as she felt that photography simply wasn’t enough, and used forms of audio and objects like posters in order to capture a more rounded experience to support the topic she was exploring.

In this, she began to describe how important it was for her to not allow this sense of overwhelming involvement in the topic, as some of these in particular contained graphic stories and upsetting imagery that could’ve otherwise been negatively affecting her.

Overall, I found this a very interesting talk to be involved with as Abril was able to show us how to handle difficult topics personally, while also representing the subject matter well. After hearing this talk, I would like to look into how to develop my own exhibitions in a more intriguing way by using mixed media.