Killing your idols… ¿Es posible separar al artista de su obra?

Throughout history, many iconic works of art have turned their creators into idols. On many occasions we discover their art once it has been filtered through the lens of their public image or their aesthetics.

Capitalism and consumer society have contributed to elevating musicians, actresses, visual artists, or photographers to the point of turning them into icons and idols, fusing artist and work of art into a supposedly indivisible unity. However, the internet and certain social movements lead us to question and separate this unity.

Speaking from their own perspectives and personal experiences, Catalan filmmaker Clara Roquet, Galician performer Helena Salgueiro and Basque composer and singer Miren Iza will discuss this issue. A meeting between three different generations of contemporary creators born in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Three social and cultural eras (Generation X, Millennials and Gen-Z) that have had different experiences when constructing their personal iconography.

Clara Roquet

Clara Roquet is a Spanish screenwriter and film director. She has written films such as 10,000 km and Els dies que vindràn with Carlos Marques-Marcet, Petra, by Jaime Rosales, and Costa Brava, Lebanon, with Mounia Akl. Her first feature film, Libertad, premiered at the Critics' Week at the Cannes Film Festival and won two Goya awards, including Best New Director. Thanks to a grant from La Caixa, she studied a Master's in Screenwriting at Columbia University in New York. She teaches screenwriting and directing at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona).

Miren Iza

Tulsa is Miren Iza (Donostia, Spain, 1979), a Basque composer and singer who began her career in music in the late 1990s with the female punk pop band Electrobikinis. Since 2007, under the stage name Tulsa, she has released six albums. She writes pop songs in Spanish in a singer-songwriter vein. She has been greatly influenced by women across different genres, melodic pop songs, blues, dream pop… from Mari Trini to Beach House, and including Bessie Smith or Karen Dalton. Her love of cinema has led her to participate in several film projects, providing music for Jonás Trueba's film Los exiliados románticos and Raúl Santos' medium-length film Ignonauta. In 2007 she was nominated for a Latin Grammy award for best new artist and her latest album, released in May 2021, is called Ese Éxtasis.

Helena Salgueiro

Helena Salgueiro is a Galician poet, performer, and theatre director. Her work focuses on performativity and the politics of the body through language, writing and movement, having exhibited her work in theatres, museums, spaces and festivals in Galicia, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Saudi Arabia. She has published two collections of poetry and a play, as well as participating in several anthologies of contemporary poetry and contributing research and writing reviews for publications on performing arts, dance and poetry in Galicia and the UK.