Vital decisions

Although she was born in San Cugat, in the province of Barcelona, Marta’s family moved to Mallorca when she was small, so she was able to enjoy a childhood surrounded by nature in Esporles. Until she was a teenager, when she started to experience a sense of oppression from living on an island: “I felt the need to leave, the physical sensation of being limited by a perimeter”, she tells. This was one of the two reasons she crossed the sea to study architecture in Barcelona.

The second reason was that she had seen a documentary showing the Johnson & Johnson factory in New Jersey, designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. “On that day I realised that I wanted to do the same as him, those mushroom-shaped columns, the light coming in from above… I found everything in that work spectacular”, she says.

Even though Marta found her way with architecture, she says that “if I could speak to that 18-year-old girl I once was today, I would tell her to stop and reflect a little. There is so much social pressure on us, there is no sense in forcing a teenager, a person who is still maturing, to make a such a quick decision on what they want to be in the future”.

Arriving in Barcelona was an abrupt change for her - “it was startling at first, but I soon got used to it and found new worlds on a cultural and musical level that didn’t exist in Mallorca”. It was in Paris, where she studied as an Erasmus student, that her more artistic side flourished. “The technical part of architecture is very dense, and in France I was able to learn the more creative side: sculpture, engraving, furniture design”, she recalls.

Marta has never stopped working. “I finished my final degree project on 23^rd July, and by August 1^st I was working in a firm. Afterwards, I started up a studio with some friends from my degree course, Cierto Estudio, and we won first prize for the social housing apartment project in Plaça de les Glòries. It was absolutely amazing that we managed to win that prize at under 30 years old”, she says. But once again she decided to take a breather before gathering momentum again. “I decided to return to Mallorca; it was an intense decision, like a rupture. I felt the need to do more artistic projects, beyond architecture, to work with different people, to jump from one place to another. I needed to work with my hands and get immediate results. I express myself better with my hands, because I like touching and feeling the materials”, Marta explains.

The “opening up to a new world”, as she defines it, took place when the singer Rosalía, the winner of several Grammy awards, called her to work on the scenography for her concerts. “It was a jump to a different level, working with playwrights, musicians, creative directors; it’s spectacular. I felt very comfortable with that experience, and it was a starting point on my more personal path”.

Marta researches, reads and tries things out. “When I find something I like I fix my attention on a concept, a volume, a material I don’t know. I delve deeper into shapes and reactions, and when I have the change to put it into practice, I do”. Like the work she does with the glass blower Ferran Collado, for example. “Glass is a magical material. It can be in a solid and a liquid state, it reacts to cold and heat, you can put air inside it, it has transparencies, it is simultaneously fragile and rigid”...

Marta exhibits in European art galleries, with pieces like The Plastic Kingdom, created alongside [...]

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