DREAMS OF  AZABACHE
by ESTELA OLIVA 

Online exhibition & NFT Collection
#soundscape

2024

​​

Dreams of Azabache is an oniric online exhibition and NFT collection by Estela Oliva exploring themes of identity, memory and ecology, through the lens of the artist's subconscious into a world where film and dreams converge. 

​

Within this realm, an unknown landscape holds a temple with seven film scenes introducing surreal and symbolic narratives. These works serve as portals into the artist’s inner world, where the boundaries between reality and imagination blur, and the tangible and the ephemeral converge. The exhibition invites viewers to a dreamlike dimension where theatrical sets come alive with real characters, including the artist, transformed into avatar figures and feminine deities, sculpted amulets and objects, and 3D scans from the physical world.

The project’s inspiration stems from the evocative album "Azabache" (Houndstooth, 2023) by Ana Quiroga, with its thematic exploration of magic, folk traditions, and the significance of the jet gemstone. Oliva, having designed the album’s artwork, expanded her collaboration with Quiroga to develop an audiovisual performance for Sonar Festival in Barcelona. Building on this collaboration, Oliva’s new body of work Dreams of Azabache takes a step further into a personal narrative, integrating her Andalusian heritage with life experiences in London. The Nasrid Star, a symbol of the architecture of her native city of Granada, shapes the structural form of the exhibition space, embodying the coming together of heritage with contemporary expression in Oliva’s ongoing exploration of identity. The exhibition also features a soundscape composed by Ana Quiroga. 

Dreams of Azabache is an open and free exploration of the interconnection between natural and supernatural experiences; lived and imagined places; given and chosen experiences, where memories, ecologies and the powers of queer and feminine energies coexist.

​​​​