Joya: AiR / Kora Moya Rojo / ESP
photo Simon Beckmann
‘During my residency at JOYA: AiR, I wanted to reconnect with my Spanish roots and create artworks inspired by the residency’s surroundings as well as explore themes of personal displacement and national identity.
After my arrival, I immediately felt a sudden sense of peace that I hadn’t experienced in a very long time. The landscape, the fresh air, the silence, the animals that lived there, the fruits and olive trees. Everything was so stimulating, it was like pure magic. All these factors led me to experiment with what nature was providing.
Inspired by JOYA’s ecological mission, I felt the need to create sustainable work, so I collected clay from the mountains and made clay from scratch. The process involved collecting the soil, sifting it, mixing it with water and kneading it until ready. Through this newly discovered ritual, I found myself going back to the starting point and trusting my primitive instinct.
The sculptures that I created were hybrids of the animals that lived near the complex (cats, goats, found bones) and the fruits that were growing in the land (persimmons, olives, pomegranates).
Besides creating new work, part of the experience was to share thoughts with the other artists and learn more about other disciplines. We inspired each other somehow, either by asking for feedback or just by listening to each other in front of the fireplace every night after the wonderful dinner that Donna would prepare for us.
I will be forever grateful for the time I got to spend at Joya: AiR. The environment felt so welcoming and peaceful, I even remember saying to Simon "I feel at home!" after only having spent a few hours there. Thank you, Simon and Donna, for doing what you do and for letting me live this experience’.
Kora Moya Rojo is a visual artist creating paintings that revolve around fluidity, nostalgia, and womanhood. Rendered in a pulsating palette of cold blues and warm reds, her vibrant works infuse autobiographical, historical, and religious iconographies with a rural sensibility. Examining the complex effects of childhood trauma, female oppression and urban migration, she investigates personal displacement and national identity in symbolic scenarios that overflow with utopian potential. Digitally reconstructing dreams, imaginations and memories into enchanting drawings and canvases, Moya Rojo creates eerie worlds that inhabit the liminal space between the conscious and the unconscious. Her androgynous, embryonic figures stretch beyond the earthly domain to the otherworldly as they hybridize with provincial food, coalesce with existing objects, and mutate with unspecified surroundings. In a continuous metamorphosis, the internal and external forces at play make the familiar foreign, and the foreign disturbingly familiar.
Kora Moya Rojo (b. 1993, Spain) lives and works in London. She graduated with a BA in Fine Art from the University of Murcia (Murcia, Spain, 2015). Recent exhibitions include ‘Into the Cosmere‘ in Shoreditch (London, UK, 2021), ‘Euphoric’ at Procrastinarting (online, 2021), and ‘Every Woman Biennial’ at The Copeland Gallery (London, UK, 2021). Latest features include All She Makes and Friend of the Artist. Moya Rojo is part of the Winsor & Newton private art collection. She recently finished her residency at Joya Air (Spain, 2021) and has another one coming up at ArtHouse Pani (Mexico, 2022).