Hondartza Fraga

Artist Hondartza Fraga shares the challenges of balancing a creative practice with having a family, the first piece of artwork she remembers seeing and who she turns to for advice in our next Mixing It Up feature.

"I am interested in human relationships with places and objects that are too big or too small, too far or too close to be apprehended directly. The sea and outer space are recurrent themes in my work. These are places that we can only inhabit imaginatively and are principally experienced via mediated images. My work often responds to archives and collections. Previous commissions and residencies have explored: the site and history of Jodrell Bank Observatory (2016); Leeds Art Gallery’s Cotman/Kitson archive (2017); and the 1815 geological map by William Smith at North Lincolnshire Museum (2021). 

Drawing in an expanded sense is central to my practice. My work was featured in the 2021 book Vitamin D3: Today’s Best Contemporary Drawing, by Phaidon. In addition to drawing, I also use video, animation, photography, and projection, and often combine these in multi-part works. Archive sources are reworked through a wide range of processes, including analogue and digital techniques as well as more abstract explorations of trace and materiality. My artworks highlight the gap or tension between the observed and inferred. My current/latest project seeks to problematise ‘the raw’ as the central topic for a practice-led PhD."

Hondartza Fraga was born in 1982 in A Coruña, Spain and lives and works in Leeds, UK. She graduated in Fine Art at The University of the Basque Country (Spain) in 2005 and completed an MA Fine Art Practice at Sheffield Hallam University in 2007. Currently she is a PhD Practice-led at the School of Design, University of Leeds, with an award from the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities. Fraga’s work is represented by Espacio Alexandra (Spain) and The Art Court (UK).