Hello,

My name is Marta Troya (1995), and I’m a Spanish visual artist. I studied Fine Art and History of Art at Kingston School of Art (London) and obtained a scholarship to study Sculpture for six months at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (Beijing, China). In 2018, I graduated from the Royal College of Art, where I did a Master's in Painting.

In 2015, I was awarded the Stanley Picker Gallery Travel Award to spend several months living with an indigenous family of weavers in Kozhikode, India. There, I learnt about traditional loom weaving and immersed myself in the lives of those who work in this tradition. This experience deepened my appreciation for the rich heritage of traditional crafts and their community aspect, redirecting my artistic focus towards wanting to bridge the gap between craftsmanship and Fine Art. Through hands-on research and collaboration with artisans globally, with whom I also organise workshops, I’ve developed an art practice that blends contemporary perspectives with traditional mediums like weaving, ceramics, glassmaking, and printmaking. By stripping these mediums of their utilitarian or practical aspects and incorporating my own autobiographical narratives, I seek to provoke thought and dialogue about the value and significance of artisanal skills in a modern context. This fusion of old and new, in which etchings are integrated into tapestries and ceramics are stitched onto handmade paper collages, creates a highly personal and unique artistic expression that elevates the status of craft in the contemporary art scene.

In terms of artistic intention, through my artwork, I try to stitch back the divisions we are experiencing in our current society: our relationship with nature, the universe, each other, and our own bodies. Having used art from an early age to process my father’s suicide and my mother’s cancer, I believe that art has a deeply therapeutic effect. Through creativity, I hope to regain a sense of wholeness in my life and offer the same to the viewer. I see art and life as inextricably entangled, and I feel my practice as a space to return to in order to process my experiences and express my inner world.

My artwork has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in China, UK, Spain, Morocco, and Portugal. I have also been selected as an artist in residence at various artistic spaces in the US, UK, India, China, Morocco, Portugal, and Spain.

Alongside my art practice, I work part-time as an energy healer, once again using my hands as a tool to help people regain their emotional and physical balance and health.