Teresa Lanceta has been chosen for the 2023 National Plastic Arts Award, an annual honor bestowed by the Ministry of Culture and Sports. The award carries a prize of 30,000 euros, underscoring the significance of her sustained practice and its impact on contemporary Spanish art.
The jury praised Lanceta for a career that has endured over decades while safeguarding a distinctly feminine, local, and collective voice. Her work remains deeply rooted in community textures and lived experience, resisting transient trends and offering a persistent reflection on daily life through art.
In the announcement, the panel highlighted Lanceta’s knitting as a language that questions entrenched patriarchal norms and functions as a primitive, human code. This approach fosters dialogue with a broad spectrum of communities, including Roma groups, Moroccan nomadic weavers, and residents of Barcelona’s Raval neighborhood, where craft becomes a shared language across cultures and generations.
The prize also recognizes how Lanceta centers traditional practices and lifeways, engaging with them through tapestries, paintings, drawings, and theoretical inquiry. Her work moves beyond purely decorative craft to reveal the social and historical dimensions embedded in textile making, inviting viewers to reconsider the relationship between technique and meaning.
Image from Lanceta’s most recent exhibition at a major regional museum, captured by an observer who notes the artist’s enduring commitment to materiality and form.
Lanceta earned a History degree from the University of Barcelona and later completed a PhD in Art History at the Complutense University of Madrid. Her academic background informs a practice that blends rigorous research with tactile creativity, producing works that engage both scholars and general audiences alike.
Since the 1970s, textile-focused practice has been central to Lanceta’s artistic vocabulary. She navigates the boundary between craft and fine art, weaving formal investigation with hands-on techniques. Her investigations span centuries of textile traditions while addressing present-day concerns, creating a bridge between past and present through material exploration.
Key themes in Lanceta’s research traverse traditional textile arts from North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, historical Spanish tapestries from the 15th century, and the experiences of women in labor-centric industries. These topics surface in multiple media, including sculpture, drawing, and installation, revealing the social fabric that connects people across time and geography.
Lanceta’s work has been presented in venues and exhibitions organized by national institutions and international festivals alike. Notable spaces include contemporary art centers and museums in Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid, and international venues that have hosted dialogue about textile heritage, gender, and community identity. The reach of her practice extends to immersive exhibitions that juxtapose archival sources with contemporary creation, inviting audiences to participate in the interpretive process and to reevaluate the cultural value of traditional crafts.