Laia Estruch: Hello Everyone

Over the last fifteen years, Laia Estruch (Barcelona, 1981) has produced a consistently personal body of work that treats the human voice as a material and expressive force. Her practice has spanned ancestral poetry and post-punk music, increasingly moving beyond spoken or sung words toward a primal sonic language that explores breath, cries, whispers, body consciousness, and the sound of the natural world. Estruch’s vocal explorations have often been paired with monumental sculptural settings —steel slides, inflatable buoys, tensile sails, and giant net traps— that function as surrogate bodies and interpretive scores for staging her “vocal rehearsals.”

Her first survey exhibition, “HELLO EVERYONE”, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, presented a living, navigable archive of works produced since 2011, including live events, sculptures, audio installations, videos, graphic works, and visual scores. The exhibition moved away from the chronological retrospective, favouring a layout that oscillated between display and storage and between ‘active’ and ‘inactive’ modes to reconsider the conventions of presenting live arts. Sculptures appeared at times in their original form and at others dismantled or reconfigured, confronting visitors with the varied scales, materials, temporalities, and sensibilities of her work.

Central to the exhibition was “Trena (Cortina)” (2025), a retractable curtain up-cycled from her largest work to date, the 2023 installation “Trena” at the Sala Oval of the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona. This new performative element partitioned the space, directed visitor movement, and served as a scenic instrument for “Mix” (2021–), an ongoing performance that live-edits the vocal registers Estruch has developed over the years.

“HELLO EVERYONE” also introduced two additional new works: a multipart audio installation and a video adopting the format of a trailer —a promotional language Estruch has explored in earlier projects. Three shorter capsules (one, two and three) were posted on the museum's social networks ahead of the opening, announcing the exhibition through an advertising vocabulary.

The greeting that gave the exhibition its title is taken from “Jingle” (2011), a work through which Estruch self-consciously launched her art career with a viral melody —a wry, performative declaration of intent about finding one’s voice as an artist. Subsequent projects, including “Performance al teatre” (2012), “/fu:d/” (2014), “Àlbum Victòria” (2015), and the “Moat” series (2016–17), signalled a gradual incorporation of sculptural elements into her performances, emphasising the interplay between voice, body, and space. Water and wind became central to later works such as “Sibina” (2019), ”Crol” (2019), “Ocells perduts” (2021–22), and the “Kite” series (2022–24), highlighting the interdependence of human and natural soundscapes.

The exhibition was accompanied by the first comprehensive monograph on Estruch, designed by Ariadna Serrahima (If publications) and published in both English and Spanish editions by the Museo Reina Sofía. It includes a text by artist Sharon Hayes —Estruch’s former professor at The Cooper Union— on performance pedagogy; an extended essay by Latitudes on voice, body, and sculpture; and a conversation between Estruch and curator Marc Navarro.

Occupying over 500m2 on the fourth floor of the museum’s Sabatini building, the exhibition opened in parallel with the cultural events in Madrid surrounding the 44th edition of the ARCOmadrid art fair.