CURA
Arabel Lebrusan
Caressing the River Mersey, 2023
Mix of rocks and other cement aggregates collected along the River Mersey, and Jesmonite
25cm x 25cm x 0.5cm
Arabel Lebrusan (b.1974, Madrid) is a UK-based visual artist whose practice revolves around ecofeminism, material culture and the tactile environment, delving into broader issues of power relationships, ecological justice and inequality. Employing sculpture and installation, as well as video and performance, Lebrusan often utilises materials loaded with significance and imbued with meanings accumulated over the years or millennia. Currently, she has expanded her practice to incorporate ecological grief into her methodology.
Lebrusan has created site-specific installations at various venues, including Standpoint Gallery London (2023), The Higgins Museum Bedford (2021), Brighton CCA (2021), Women’s Support Centre, Surrey (2021), Museum of St. Albans (2015), St. Paul’s Square, Bedford (2012), Crafts Council (2008), Art in Fuse, Rotterdam (2005), Lunâ Art Collective Gallery, Cebu (2004), and Gesundbrunnen bunker, Berlin (2000). Her TEDx talk on ethical jewellery and her latest campaign raising funds for Global March against Child Labour are examples of her international activist work. She was also awarded Designer of the Year (2022) by the National Association of Jewellers, UK and was the winner of Eastern Approaches (2014) at UH Galleries, Museum of St.Albans.
In 2021, Lebrusan was awarded a research fellowship at the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics at the University of Brighton for her two-year-long project, Toxic Waves. Following this, she pursued an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 2023.