Open Chair

Laia Blasco Soplon is the director of the Bachelor’s Degree in Art at Universitat Oberta Catalunya (UOC). With a degree in Fine Art from Universitat de Barcelona and a PhD candidate on UOC’s online PhD Programme in Information Technologies and Networks, her artistic and academic research is centred on the creation, study and critique of interactive visual tools for experimentation and learning.

Anna Busquets Alemany holds a PhD in History. She is currently a dean of Art and Humanities Studies at UOC, and has been a director of East Asia Studies and deputy director of the Office of the Vice President for Academic Planning (UOC). Her areas of research focus on European knowledge on China in the modern age, the role of devotees in China and the Philippines as cultural mediators and the process of constructing the image of China in the Spanish monarchy.  

Carmen Collado Jiménez focuses her artistic practice on the metropolis, often seen as the heart of “civilisation”. She draws on this imaginary through different artistic disciplines, in both material and conceptual terms, and uses women’s names to disseminate her work:  “Martina”, responsible for presenting her most recent creations, is personified as a casual observer who blends in with the crowd. 

Claudia Delso Carreira mobilises the Rethinking the Museum (Institutional Practice and Mezzo-politics) Seminar from the Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Programme, Connective Tissue, and is a cultural manager and mediator. She was a councillor for Democratic Participation and Innovation at A Coruña City Council with the municipal platform Marea Atlántica (2015–2022), and since then her concerns have revolved around the opening-out of institutionalism and the possibilities of radically innovative public policies. She also holds a degree in Art History from Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, with postgraduate qualifications in International Cultural Cooperation and Management, and Technopolitics and Law in the Digital Era (Universitat de Barcelona). She is currently part of the Institut de Recerca Urbana de Barcelona as a researcher.

Muriel Gómez Pradas holds a PhD in Art History (University of Zaragoza) and is an associate dean in Alliances, Community and Culture at UOC’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities and a lecturer on its Bachelor’s Degree in Art. Her research fields focus on the analysis of creative processes and institutionalisation in museum collections, the reception of art, specifically from non-Western cultures, such as Japanese culture, and processes of rupture and continuity in Catalan artistic modernity before and after the Spanish Civil War. 

Albert Iglesias Aulet holds a degree in Art from UOC and is currently studying an MA in Teaching. His practice evolves in the spheres of art and design, specifically in the fields of sculpture and interior design. Aesthetics and Catholic tradition, from a cultural and costumbrista perspective, is a constant reference point in his works. Reds, blacks and golds combine with sharp, precise lines that structure, from planned control, the author’s modus operandi.

Núria Iglesias Rodríguez (Piròmana d’Argos) trained in physical theatre and improvised dance, her artistic practice linked to the places and beings that inhabit and transit them. She is concerned with the notion of performativity in the plasticity of memory or imagination, and her most recent works most notably include Esto podría ser una rave (Festival Influx and Antic Teatre, Barcelona, 2023).

María Iñigo Clavo is a lecturer on UOC’s Bachelor’s Degree in Art whose research themes include coloniality, museology, modernity and its inventions in otherness, critical heritage, art and curatorship in Latin America, with a focus on Brazilian art.

Merce Irigoyen Jiménez holds a degree and PhD in Veterinary Science (2002) from the University of Zaragoza. Following an accident in 1993, she suffered a C5-C6 spinal injury, and in 1997 she attained Proven Research Experience at the Public University of Navarra. Since 1998, she has combined her work with the Official Association of Veterinaries of Navarra with different courses in graphic design, and in 2009 she obtained an MA in Multimedia Creation and Production from UOC and is currently studying the Bachelor’s  Degree in Art at the same university. Her art projects explore themes related to vulnerability, intimacy, moral autonomy, functional diversity and sexual diversity. 

Amparo Moroño Díaz holds a degree in Art History and carried out her PhD studies in Art and Education at Universitat de Barcelona, specialising in cultural pedagogies. She has worked in different cultural institutions in the field of education and artistic mediation and since 2011 has focused her interests on the rural environment of Extremadura, where she supports processes of community and eco-feminist research and cultural production. She is currently head of the Culture Programme at the Valle del Jerte Community Group, where she is involved in the Habitar el Palacio (Inhabiting the Palace) project, and is part of the artistic management team of the Instituto de la Tierra(Earth Institute), as well as an associate professor on UOC’s Bachelor’s Degree in Art. 

Sira Pizà holds a degree in Fine Art and a PhD in Humanities, specialising in the critical theory of contemporary art. Her work explores the spheres of curatorship, writing and cultural management, and she currently curates Spiritvessel, in Espinavessa, a space for independent artistic residences in rural Catalonia, and is deputy director of the Llum BCN Festival in Barcelona. She has been an associate director of Future Gallery, in Berlin and Mexico City, and is a manager at Sol Calero Studio, Berlin. She has also taught Curatorial Studies at UOC. Her thesis revolves around the self-production of the artist’s identity as a performative act and her more recent concerns focus on processes of exoticisation in art.

Aida Sánchez de Serdio Martín holds a PhD in Fine Arts from the Universitat de Barcelona and is a lecturer on UOC’s Bachelor’s Degree in Art. Her main field of specialisation is education and community practices in relation to arts and culture, understood as a place of knowledge production, political debate and social transformation.

Mabel Tapia mobilises the Rethinking the Museum (Institutional Practice and Mezzo-politics) Seminar from the Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Programme, Connective Tissue. She was previously deputy artistic director of the Museo from 2020 to 2023 and a coordinator of the L’Internationale museum confederation. In France she co-directed, for three years, the post-graduate course in artistic research, Document et art contemporain, held at École européenne supérieure de l’image (ÉESI) and École nationale supérieure d’art (ENSA), in Bourges. Moreover, she has coordinated and participates in the Southern Conceptualisms Network. Her areas of research are concerned with institutional policies and artistic practices from the twenty-first century, characterised by the deactivation of the aesthetic function.

Conchi Torreblanca Mendo (Conchitagoras) is an artist who in her practice looks to join different fields of knowledge via drawing and the creation of small visual narrations in the form of cartoon strips and comics. Six years after studying Economics, she started to focus on illustration, and currently combines UOC’s Bachelor’s Degree in Art with Computer Music Studies.