ROME.- Marginalia are annotations, drawings, and doodles that appear in the margins of stories, documents, or illuminated manuscripts. Extravagant creatures that deviate from the central discourse of the work, housed in foliage surrounding the main text. What happens outside the walls creates gardens that overflow the boundaries of the page. In these margins, a herbarium unfolds in which botanical species are suspended in time between two bodies: human and plant. All these herbs embody human identities that have had to become landscape as a defense mechanism; mimicry and metamorphosis protect those who are persecuted, and the botanical blindness we suffer makes them go unnoticed:
Thus, two fennel plants in love intertwine, longing for each other. Now that they no longer have a body, no one will come to bother them. A moth mimics a deadly hornet to scare away entomologists. It perches on a mulberry tree and listens, ears wide open, to everything we whisper in the room. A Boquiola Trifoliata, the plant that sees everything, unfurls toward the ceiling, reflecting everything around it; the more common it becomes, the less likely it is to be detected. The inverted flowers of the fig tree lie dormant, waiting for someone to take the first bite that will trigger the transformation. Meanwhile, the harpies, two “pajarracas,” flutter about, creating zigzag patterns, carrying the insult as a banner of their friendship and strength.
Blanca Gracia (1989, Madrid, ES) lives and works between Barcelona and Madrid. She holds a BFA in Fine Arts (2012) and a MA in Teacher Training for the Arts (2020) both from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include: 2025 - ADA, Rome, IT; Cooke Latham Gallery, London, UK; Prats Nogueras Blanchard, Barcelona, ES. 2022 - Sala de Arte Joven, Madrid, ES. 2020 - Twin Gallery, Madrid, ES; Citadel of Pamplona, ES. Recent group exhibitions include: 2025 - Real Academia de España en Roma, curated by Caterina Borelli and Anna Cestelli Guidi, Rome, IT; Fabra i Coats: Fàbrica de Creació, curated by Pilar Cruz, Barcelona, ES. 2024 - Cooke Latham Gallery, London, UK; MUSE - Museo delle Scienze, curated by Alice Labor, Trento, IT; La Fabra Centre d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona, ES; Casal Solleric, Palma de Mallorca, ES. 2023 - Kottinspektionen, curated by Alba Folgado, Uppsala, SE; Casa de Iberoamérica, curated by Joaquín Jesús Sánchez, Cádiz, ES. 2019 - Matadero - Centro de Creación Contemporánea, curated by Andrea Pacheco González and Mônica Hoff, Madrid, ES; Bombon Projects, curated by Caterina Almirall, Barcelona, ES. Among her residencies: Real Academia de España en Roma (2024-25), Gasworks, London (2023), Matadero - Centro de Creación Contemporánea, Madrid (2018-19). Gracia received the Art Nou Award in 2025, the Obra Abierta Award in 2024, the Primera Fase Grant in 2022. In 2017 she received the Generaciones and Mario Antolín Scholarship for the BMW Painting Prize.
