Riaq Miuq (born in Sant Just Desvern, Barcelona, 1994) is a visual artist whose work is based on a fascination with the natural world, spirituality and its contrast with industrial reality.
He studied Applied Mural Arts and Organic Agriculture. The contrast of these doctrines gave him the necessary tools and knowledge to explore his ideals in a plastic way. His work has been shown in Barcelona, Tanger and in GKo Gallery, Tolosa, Basque Country.
Riaq looks for simple techniques using materials available in surroundings, such as collected vegetal fibres and mineral pigments, and industrial materials like garbage, paint, ink or bleach. He is currently part of a group called Neo-Rupestres that works and researches with natural materials, collected from the environment.
His last project is called OMGRA. The shadows under the stars. Omgra is a vivant project that is still growing. It focuses on the creation of four entities representing the four natural elements.
Using the masks as the physical body, the analog photographs provide them with movement, and the drawings give a symbolic explanation.
Every mask correspond to one part of the natural and agrarian cycle. The four together are protected by the force of the OMGRA constellation.
•Harvest (Fire): seed, fructification, reproduction. Red colour.
•Soil (Earth): root, decomposition, mineralization. Black colour.
•Rain (Water): leaf and stem, hydration, two faces: storm-drought. Blue colour.
•Light (air): flower, oxygen, subtlety. White colour.
The idea that this project pursues is -through ritual and symbolic experimentation- to build bridges between the industrial world and the natural or ancestral world. Another purpose is the ambient and social complaint of the degradation of the landscape by our industrial society. Specifically in the mediterranean areas ‘Baix Llobragat’, ‘Collserola’, and ‘Montserrat’. All of them places that served as inspiration and where the different materials used come from.
In the dark forest soil, between leaves, branches and the humus full of tiny life forms, we can find objects such as rusty bottle caps and nails, shotgun cartridges, old plastic ropes... The harvest of these forgotten human traces and other natural materials (vegetable fibres, pumpkins, wood, pigments ...) is a very important part of the process, since these materials are part of two communicating worlds. In this way masks, dresses, mobile pendants and the OMGRA temple were built.