Inma Herrera
In residence: July - August 2022
Inma Herrera (1986, Madrid, Spain) is a visual artist living and working in Helsinki since 2014. She has a Fine Arts Bachelor Degree and a MA in Art Creation and Research from UCM, Madrid. She was trained as a Print Media Specialist at the Spanish Royal Mint in Madrid, and she holds MFA studies from Kuvataideakatemia, Helsinki.
Herrera works on practice-based projects which examine process, genesis, transformation and materiality in relation to image-making techniques. She works “with” and “from” printmaking due to its characteristics as an expressive language. She scrutinises and deconstructs its grammar because it allows her to immerse in a reflexive and analytical universe where body and matter are in constant interaction. Through this experimentation and analysis, she also explores how this medium expands into the form of installation and how its limits blur when combined with video, performance, and sculpture. She is interested in the relationship between makers and materials, the physical dimension of labour and the revival of craftsmanship in defiance of the 'relative dematerialisation' of the body in an era of virtuality.
Herrera’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. In the last few years, she has been shown in Austria (Crosssections at Kunsthalle Exnergasse), Sweden (Crosssections at Konstfack), Spain (F2 Gallery, Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation, Laboral Center of Contemporary Art, Centro Federico García Lorca, and ARCO Madrid, among others), Italy (Processi 145 in Spanish Academy in Rome and Impronte Romane at The Temple University) Tunisia (Climbing Through the Tide at B7L9) and Finland (Amos Rex Museum, ForumBox, Gallery G, Exhibition Laboratory, SIC Gallery, Kosminen, Oksasenkatu 11, etc.)
Herrera was awarded the Ducat Prize 2020; founded in 1858, the oldest art award in Finland, presented by the Finnish Art Society annually to a young Finnish artist under 35 in recognition of his or her achievements. Herrera has been nominated for Kjell Nupen Memorial Grant 2017 and The Queen Sonja Print Award 2020. She was awarded a Postgraduate Award Europe from Obra Social La Caixa in 2014 as well as one of the Grants from the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome 2017/2018 (RAER). She has been more actively working in Spain since 2019 as she started to work in collaboration with the Iranian artist Shirin Salehi. Their collective Herrera Salehi was awarded the Pilar Juncosa and Sotheby’s Biennial Award for Artistic Creation whose artistic research results were presented at the Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation in Mallorca in 2021.
She is currently represented by the Spanish gallery F2 in Madrid, and is working on projects in Finland and Spain.