about
Ester Partegàs’ recent work investigates how certain discrete, and often invisible, formal structures order and construct civilization from the infra-ordinary, the domestic, and the anti-heroic. Working with ubiquitous objects and spaces that are part of the everyday is not new in her production. Thus, transactional residue from daily interactions—plastic bags, food packaging, supermarket receipts, labels—has helped her explore a dynamic and unstable space that simultaneously enjoys and regrets the given principles of contemporary culture. With a critical view on the profusion of control in society, all her work looks at ways of living, the networks in which we evolve, the circuits through which we move, and, especially, the perceived formulations that delimit and limit human territories, while drawing closely on a personal history that addresses experiences and effects of disjunction and dislocation.
Partegàs has shown extensively, most recently at Museo CA2M, Madrid (2026 solo); Es Baluard Museu d’Art Contemporani de Mallorca (2026 solo); at CCA Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco (two-person 2025); Ballroom Marfa, TX (two-person 2024); TEA Tenerife (2023), Palazzo Delle Exposizione, Rome (2023) NoguerasBlanchard, Madrid (2022 solo); Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (2021); Essex Flowers (two-person 2021); Pure Joy, Marfa TX (2020, solo); Conde Duque, Madrid (2020); The Drawing Center, NY (2019); the Museum of the City of NY (2019); Transborder Biennial / Bienal Transfronteriza, El Paso Museum of Art + Museo de Arte Ciudad Juárez (2018). Past shows include MACBA Barcelona; Sculpture Center, NY; Artist’s Space, NY; Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2007 solo); The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum; Public Art Fund, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria; Whitechapel Gallery, London; MACRO Museum/Depart Foundation, Rome; and the Moscow, Busan and Athens Biennials, among others.
She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2025), Rome Prize for Visual Arts at the American Academy in Rome (2022-2023), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship (2014), Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2004), and Fundación Botín Grant (1999), artist in residence at the Chinati Foundation, Marfa TX (2012), and at MacDowell (2017). She has been faculty at the Sculpture Department of the Yale School of Art (2004, 2008-2009), Virginia Commonwealth University VCU (2011-2015), Skowhegan (2009), SUNY Purchase (2016-2018) and since 2016 she is a part-time lecturer at Parsons School of Design, NY.
Born in La Garriga (Barcelona), she is based in New York City since 1998, with part-time residencies in Marfa, TX, and Barcelona.