Miguel Sbastida is a visual artist working across sculpture, video installation and site-specific performance, in an investigation around the intersections of geologic time, cultural ecologies and climate breakdown. In his works, he investigates the geo-poetics of matter and environmental processes through ontological, scientific, eco-critic, and post-colonial perspectives. His process is highly conceptual and understands art making as an entry point for epistemological analysis and social transformation. Through an exercise of interrogating the traditional boundaries between the lively and the inert, the human and the non-human, the biologic and the geologic, his works strive to establish new perspectives towards a sense of belonging, agency, cross-contamination and exchange in our relationship with the Earth Organism.
Sbastida graduated from a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Practice at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2015-17), with the full support of a scholarship from La Caixa Foundation; where he was nominated for the Dedalus Foundation awards in Sculpture. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Universidad Complutense of Madrid (2007-12) after his fellow BFA studies in Holland (2011) and Canada (2012). Since then, he has lectured at international symposiums and seminars like Climate-Truth-Now Chicago (2017), Ethics for Making in the Anthropocene (2018), Sustainability (or not so much) in art making and its institutions (2020), or II Forum Herbart Roots & Seeds (2021).
Over the last ten years, his works have been exhibited internationally at venues like ARCO Madrid, Locust Projects, BOZAR Brussels, Korea Foundation Gallery Seoul, CDAN Museum, the Zhou B Art Center, Es Baluard Museum, Boghossian Foundation, Museo Centre del Carme, Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, or the Netherlands Institute for Media Art; among others.
His practice has been awarded with several prizes and grants, including the Asia Culture Center South Korea International Mediation Grant, Madrid Art Funds, Emerging Illinois Artists, Residencias Matadero, Circuitos de Artes Plásticas, Oneminutes Film Art Amsterdam, BilbaoArte Foundation, or the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Professional Development Award.
His performance and book Walk Like a Glacier (2016/17) has been featured in Antennae-The Journal for Nature in Visual Culture, and has been widely acquired by institutions in the United States; including the Joan Flasch Artist’s Book Collection of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Yale University Haas Collection, Harvard University Special Collection, University of California San Diego Geisel Library, and the Museum of Modern Art MoMA Franklin Furnace Artists’ Book Collection, among others. Part of his work can be found at collections such as the Asia Culture Institute of South Korea, the Davis Museum, the University of Ottawa, BilbaoArte Foundation, or the Oneminutes Foundation Netherlands.
Miguel is currently based in Madrid (Spain) and his work is represented by Lucía Mendoza Gallery in Madrid.