Laida Lertxundi is a Basque born, artist and filmmaker that lived and worked in Los Angeles, California for 16 years. Combining conceptual rigor and sensuality in a process she calls “Landscape Plus,” her films establish parallels between landscape and the body as centers of pleasure and experience. Her practice is collaborative in nature, aiming to actively deconstruct the hierarchies of a traditional film shoot through the free exchange of roles both behind and in front of the camera, and the staging of improvised gestures and spontaneous, collective activities in various natural environments. Lertxundi’s work is invested landscape as both an artistic tradition and a particular set of regional characteristics, idioms and inhabitants — from the deserts of California to the dramatic mountains of her native Basque Country.
Her work, which also includes printmaking and writing has recently been shown in High Line Art, New York (2023), Artspace Aotearoa New Zealand (2023), ARKO Art Center, Seoul (2022), MoMa, New York (2022), Cibrían, San Sebastián (2021), McEvoy Arts Foundation, San Francisco (2021) and Human Resources Los Angeles (2019).
She has had solo exhibitions at Artium, Vitoria (2023), La Taller, Bilbao (2022), NoguerasBlanchard (2021), Matadero Madrid (2019), LUX London (2018), Tramway Glasgow (2018), FuturDome Milano (2019), fluent Santander (2017), Tabakalera San Sebastián (2017), DA2 Salamanca (2015), Azkuna Zentroa Bilbao, (2014), Vdrome London (2014) and Marta Cervera, (2013). Her films have been screened at numerous festivals such as Locarno, New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, London Film Festival, BFI, TIFF Toronto, Gijón, San Sebastián or Edinburgh among others.
Her monographic book, Landscape Plus, was published by Mousse Publishing and fluent in 2019. In 2020 she received the Gure Artea award. Her work is represented by LUX in London and she is currently a Professor at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon.