Long bio

Laia Abril (b. 1986) is an artist working across photography, writing, video, and sound, living and working in Barcelona. Focusing on biopolitics and gender, her practice is grounded in research and examines how systems of power shape the ways histories, bodies, and forms of violence are documented and represented.

Her work has been exhibited in over 25 countries and is held by Centre Pompidou (Paris), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid), Victoria and Albert Museum (London), MACBA (Barcelona), MoCP (Chicago), Photo Elysée (Lausanne), Fotomuseum Winterthur, and CNAP (France), among others. In 2019, she received the RPS Hood Medal in London, followed by the Foam Paul Huf Award in Amsterdam in 2021. More recently, she was awarded Spain’s prestigious National Photography Award, becoming the youngest artist ever to receive the honour.

Abril earned a Licenciatura in Journalism at Blanquerna–Universitat Ramon Llull and moved to New York to pursue photography. From 2009 to 2014, she was an artist-in-residence at FABRICA, Italy, where she worked as a researcher, editor, and staff photographer for COLORS Magazine, while developing her first major photographic and textual work, The Epilogue (2014).

Since 2015, she has developed her ongoing long-term project A History of Misogyny, which examines systemic violence against women through historical and contemporary narratives. Its first chapter, On Abortion, premiered as an installation at Les Rencontres d’Arles in 2016, where it received the Prix de la Photo Madame Figaro and the Fotopress Grant; the book (Dewi Lewis, 2018) won the Aperture Best Book Award and was a finalist for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. The second chapter, On Rape, received a Magnum Foundation Grant and the Visionary Award; its book (Dewi Lewis, 2022) was shortlisted for the Kraszna-Krausz Book Award. The third chapter, On Mass Hysteria, co-produced by Photo Elysée (2023), the Finnish Museum of Photography (2024), and Le Bal (2025), was nominated for the Prix Elysée and published by Dewi Lewis + Delpire &Co. in 2024.

Abril has been a guest lecturer at universities including Rhode Island School of Design, Parsons School of Design, and the School of Visual Arts in New York, and is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Lucerne, Switzerland. She is represented by Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire in Paris and Set Espai d’Art in Valencia.