Respiración oceánica

This work is built from a chorus of breaths. Ujjayi is a type of breathing used in yoga. The word means I victorious and is usually translated as ocean breathing because that is the image it evokes. The piece is figurative in nature, between the abstract space of the sound of breathing and the image it generates, as if sign and sense were separate, fractured.

Itziar Okariz works within the framework of action and performance, questioning the ways in which language is regulated and the signs which define us are produced. Her work —vocal performances, instantaneous acts, videos, installations and pieces of text— examines the ties between architecture, territory, body ritual, sexuality and semiotics. Often associated with feminist practices, punk rock and queer criticism of normative constructions of gender, Itziar deploys a form of aesthetic dissidence associated with Situationism. Her projects include: Unquiet Objects, Disjecta, Portland (2021); Respiración oceánica in Moving Words, Rimi Scenekunst, Stavanger; Personae, máscaras contra la barbarie, Els Baluard, Palma de Mallorca; La noche de las ideas, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2021); Las Estatuas, Fundación Oteiza, Alzuza (2020); Bodies of Water, 13th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai (2020); Perforado por, Spanish Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, together with Sergio Prego (2019); Footnote to a Footnote, Academia Española, Rome; I Never Said Umbrella, Tabakalera, San Sebastian (2018); Una construcción... CA2M, Madrid (2018); Ideorritmias, MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2017); Itziar Okariz, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel (2017); Dream Diary, Ars Parcours, Basel (2017).

Izar Ocariz likes reading, writing, drawing and doing karate. They both live in Bilbao.