Manuela De Laborde is an artist and filmmaker based in Mexico City. She studied Art at Edinburgh College of Art before receiving her master’s degree in film and Video from the California Institute of the Arts. Her work embarks on a quest to locate and isolate ethereal concepts anchored to tangible elements. In discovering these elements, Laborde regenerates and repositions an image in dynamic formations, to create new virtual spaces and, with them, propositions for change: towards care, backwardness, slowing down and ecology. At first glance, her work carries aesthetic and pleasure claims; however, it is performative in its presentation and conceptual in its purpose.
Manuela de Laborde’s recent projects include ‘El duelo de una espina dorsal’, a solo exhibition curated by José Esparza Chong Cuy, PEANA Off-site, in Mexico City, MX. In 2021 she had her first film retrospective with the DocumentaMadrid festival. De Laborde has been an artist-in-residence for the Tamayo Museum with her educational project ‘-ito/-ita’, resident at LIFT (Link of Independent Filmmakers in Toronto, CA) and resident director of the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen Conditional Cinema Program (2018-2022) for whom she created her film, ‘Ficciones’, recently presented at the New York Film Festival (NYFF) and the BFI London Film Festival. Previously, her film ‘AS WITHOUT SO WITHIN’, was selected in more than 20 festivals including MoMa + FSLC, the 20th Sesc_ Videobrasil Contemporary Art Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and Rotterdam International Film Festival. De Laborde also presented alongside Jenny Berger Myhre, the piece ‘Notes and notes and notes…’ at Casa de Lago, CDMX and Borealis Festival for Experimental Music.