Ira Lombardía: Rehearsal

March 26 - April 23, 2026
Rehearsal video still
Rehearsal

Opening Reception: March 26, 5 - 6:30pm

Artist Talk: April 2, 5:30pm

Ira Lombardía's Rehearsal unfolds through the interplay of moving image, and archival display that reflects on pictures as vessels of memory, care, and transmission. At its core lies a question: how do images carry forms of knowledge—particularly those historically associated with women—that have been overlooked, diminished, or displaced across centuries?

In the exhibition, the installation The Cavern presents a monumental photographic vinyl depicting the interior of a cave, layered with the image of a birth vessel by Suzanne de Court (fl. 1600), the only known female enamel artist of her time. Historically used to assist aristocratic women during childbirth, the vessel introduces a fragile yet persistent presence within the cavern’s interior. Together, these elements evoke the cave as a primordial room of inscription: a place where gestures of observation, care, and survival first became image.

Completing the exhibition, the video work Rehearsal (2024) and a display of books and objects from the artist’s private research collection propose the exhibition itself as a contemporary cavern: a dark space where images gather, resonate, and re-emerge.

As curator Laura Cobo wrote about the show, one might imagine a woman of the Magdalenian period tracing signs onto the rock—an act already imbued with the intertwined impulses of fertility and symbolism: to create, nurture, remember, and transmit. Today, Ira Lombardía draws a connection to the cave through the way images inhabit a contemporary dark space, circulating across screens, archives, and domestic interiors. Yet their role remains strikingly similar: they organize memory, channel collective energies, and shape the spaces where history is negotiated—whether in the home, the museum, or the digital sphere. In Rehearsal , these images converge, echo, and reappear, forming a contemporary chamber of shared memory and possibility.

Fertility Ring

Ira Lombardía (Asturias, Spain, 1977) is an artist and researcher based in New York. Her practice combines installation, sculpture, photography, collage, and video, producing large-scale works that engage with space while exploring feminism, ecology, and contemporary visual culture.

She has developed a distinguished exhibition career with solo and group shows in internationally recognized institutions. Recent solo exhibitions include Mudanza (Museo de Pontevedra, Spain, 2026), curated by Iñaki Martinez Antelo; Lecciones de Geometría (2024–2025, CceMx, Mexico City), curated by María Santoyo with the support of AECID and PhotoEspaña; Jet Lag , a solo project with Galería Alarcón Criado presented at ARCOmadrid (2022) and Paris Photo (2021), curated by Shoair Mavlian; and VOID (October 2020–January 2021) at the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA, curated by DJ Hellerman, her first solo exhibition in the United States.

Her work has also been included in prominent group exhibitions such as Volver a Imaginar (Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, 2026), The Goddess Returns. Protect the Earth (Kvinnohistoriskt Museum, Umeå, 2025–2026), Omnímoda. La fotografía como display (MUCAC, Málaga, 2025), Perpetuum Mobile (Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, 2024), Making Visible (Harlan Levey Projects, Brussels, 2024), A Certain Darkness (CaixaForum, Barcelona, 2018–2019), Les Nouveaux Encyclopédistes (European Photography Festival, Reggio Emilia, 2017), The Billboard Creative (Los Angeles, 2016), and Not All Photographs Are Records (Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool Biennial, 2014).

In 2023, her work was featured in Paris x Elles at Paris Photo, an initiative of the French Ministry of Culture curated by Karolina Ziebinska-Lewandoska, photography curator at the Centre Pompidou. She has received major awards and residencies, including Derivada, 6th Edition (Production Prize and Grant, Fundación Banco Santander, 2023); the Rauschenberg Emergency Grant (New York Foundation for the Arts, 2020); the PICE Mobility Grant (2019); and the 2nd SCAN Residency (Spanish Contemporary Art Network, London, 2018), during which she conducted research at the Aby Warburg Institute, a pivotal experience in her trajectory. She was also nominated for the Post-Photography Prototyping Prize (Fotomuseum Winterthur and Julius Baer Foundation, Switzerland, 2016).

Her work is included in major public collections, including recent significant acquisitions by the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, UK) and El Espacio 23 (Jorge Pérez Collection, Miami), as well as MNCARS (Biblioteca y Centro de Documentación, Madrid), IMJ Collection – Israel Museum (Jerusalem), and Susch Museum (Switzerland). It is also held in private collections such as Sammlung Photol (Germany), Colección DKV, Colección AKAR, and Colección Kells (Spain), Fundación Kablanc Otazu, Fundación Nueva Colección Pilar Citoler, Fundación Banco Santander, Colección Los Bragales, and Colección Studiolo, along with private collections in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, London, Sydney, and Paris.

Her work has been published in books such as Femmes Violences (Aline Bovard Rudaz, Éditions Superscriptes / Centre de la Photographie Genève, 2024), Elles x Paris Photo (Éditions Textuel, Paris, 2023), and La furia de las imágenes (Joan Fontcuberta, Galaxia Gutenberg, 2017), and has appeared in leading magazines including The Brooklyn Rail (February 2025), The British Journal of Photography (2022), and Fish Eye Magazine (special edition Women Photographers Come Out of the Shadows , Paris, 2020).

Her work is represented by Galería Alarcón Criado (Spain), with which she participates regularly in major international art fairs, and she collaborates with other galleries including Harlan Levey Projects (Brussels). With a career integrating research, artistic creation, and international exhibitions, Ira Lombardía has established herself as a leading figure in contemporary explorations of the intersections of art, feminism, technology, and visual culture.