MAITE GONZÁLEZ LAURENS
Caracas -Venezuela, 1981
She studied sociology at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) where starts her interest in the world of images. After finishing her careers she moved to Barcelona and she studied photography at the Institut d`Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya (IEFC).
She has participated in various collective exhibitions: at the IEFC`s showrooms, at the Sala de Foment de les Arts i del Disseny (FAD), at the Sony World Photography Awards (Cannes-France) and at the Casa de la Generalitat de Catalunya in Perpignan (as part of the Festival Visa OFF, within the Visa pour l`Image in France).
She has individually exhibited the project … Soy él … Soy yo … Soy ella … (…I`m him … I`m I … I`m her…) in the Espai Antonio Miró Peris (2011) and in the Centre Civic Pati Llimona (2012) in Barcelona, at the II Festival de Fotografia de Torroella de Montgrí (Girona) and in a colective exhibition at the Festival Internacional de la Imagen (FINI) 2013 in Pachuca-Mexic, after winning the first prize (category:student) of wich Graciela Iturbide and Cristina García Rodero, were jury, among others.
That same year she was selected by Atelier de Visu (Marsella-France) to do and artistic residence with workshop run by Antoine D`Agata, where she created Sinapsis (Synapses), projected in Studio Vortex and published in the colective catalog “Journal 5/6” of the atelier. Sinapsis was exposed in 2015, inside the section “Itinerarios fotográficos” of the Pa-ta-ta Festival Internacional de Fotografía Emergente in Granada and selected by Círculo A in the call “Dossier de proyectos de artistas” (artist project dossier) (2017).
In 2015 she exhibited Ejes y coordenadas (Axis and coordinates) in the section: “Atlánticas colectivas” of the XIII Bienal Internacional de Fotografía de Tenerife FOTONOVIEMBRE 2015, project with wich she obtained honorable mention in the 2da Beca Joan Cabanas-Alibau de fotografía 2016 and of wich she was finally the winner in 2017, wich allowed her to hold her first solo exhibition at a museum in 2018, at the Museo Cal Gerrer (Barcelona).
She is co-author of the book La mà del temps (2013) by Arola Editors, a dialog chained between her photographs and the poems of Carles Duarte i Montserrat, a renowned catalan poet. Recently, her project C O N T I N UU S was published in the magazine 142 Revista Cultural Nº1 / 2019 (Barcelona), and recently “Axes and coordinates” has become part of the “National collection of historic and contemporary photography of Catalonia, of the Generalitat de Catalunya (Spain).
She is currently continuing to explore the narrative possibilities of the image and studying the “Master in photography” the School of Art, Design and Architecture in Aalto University, Helsinki.