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LABA BCN brings together artists from all backgrounds and disciplines to study classical Jewish
texts, experiment, and explore the futures of Jewish art and culture.

LABA BCN offers an annual creative fellowship program for up to 10 scholarship artists. We study
from Judaism’s rich literary and intellectual traditions, in a free and creative setting so that these
fertile ideas and stories spark new thoughts and creative work.

The outputs from our laboratory
push the boundaries of what Jewish culture can be and what Jewish texts can teach.

Over the past year, the 2024 LABA Barcelona fellows have studied ancient Jewish texts on the subject of “Night” in LABA’s open-minded and free-spirited house of study.

 

Watch this video to meet our fellows and get a taste of our 2025 LABA Live event!

 

 

 

 

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    Theme

    THE 2026 THEME FOR LABA IS NAME.

    This year at LABA, we’ll dive into the magnetic power and subtle limits of names. In our experimental house of study, we’ll ask how the act of naming can both reveal and obscure truth; how words build the scaffolding of the worlds we live in; how a name can bless, bind, or transform.

    Language is our most intimate art form – our bridge between imagination and existence. To name is to create form from chaos, to touch the invisible and make it known. Yet every name also conceals what it cannot contain.

    Together, we’ll move between the cosmic and the personal: studying ancient texts on creation through speech, uncovering the mysteries of divine names – including the ineffable one we may not utter, and another that simply means The Name.We’ll reflect on how names shape destinies, how renaming can rewrite a story, and how the silence beyond words might hold its own revelation.

    And, as always, we’ll talk, eat, drink, learn, and laugh in the lush, curious, and joyfully irreverent space that is LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture.

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    Newsopen section icon

    • LABA Barcelona Alumni Exchange Program

      Artist-in-Residence 2026: Danielle Alhassid February–April 2026 As part of the LABA Europe Exchange Program, LABA Barcelona welcomes LABA NY alumna Danielle Alhassid for a three-month residency in Barcelona. The residency invites Alhassid to develop a new research-based artistic project in close collaboration with LABA Barcelona partner archives and cultural institutions, as well as with LABA

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    • LABA BCN LIVE 2025 CHANGE

      Friday, October 31 | 18:00-22:00 LABA LIVE: Public Performances & Exhibition Closing Night Convent de Sant Agustí Exhibition on view: October 27-31, 17:00-20:00 Capelles del Convent, Convent de Sant Agustí, Comerç 36, Barcelona     Change is the only constant — and yet we resist it, fear it, crave it. This year’s LABA Barcelona exhibition

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    • Application open for 2026 LABA Barcelona!

      The 2026 LABA Theme: NAME Become a LABA Fellow. This year at LABA, we’ll dive into the magnetic power and subtle limits of names. In our experimental house of study, we’ll ask how the act of naming can both reveal and obscure truth; how words build the scaffolding of the worlds we live in; how

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    • LABA Night Alumni at VIU Montjuic Barcelona

      This year, LABA Barcelona participated for the first time in the Barcelona Viu Montjuïc culture and nature weekend, organized by the Municipality of Barcelona. With Remembering Oblivion, a series of multidisciplinary artistic interventions at the medieval Jewish cemetery of Montjuïc by LABA BCN 2024 alumni artists, the project sought to bring back into collective memory

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    • TIKKUN SHAVUOT NIGHT 2025

      LABA 2025 CHANGE From the idea to the form  Work in Progress Let’s come together in this time of reflection Why do we human beings create? Why do we listen to music, paint or dance? The metahistorical calendar of Jewish culture — that of the biblical imaginary — commemorates every year, on the full moon in

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    • LABA Barcelona open call 2025

      Application for LABA 2025 fellowship program is now closed. Application dates: October 21st- December 5th, 2024.   LABA brings together artists from all backgrounds and disciplines to study classical Jewish texts, experiment, and explore the futures of Jewish art and culture. LABA is a non-religious house of study whose goal is to function as an

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    • LabaLive Barcelona! November 23-24.2024!

      Saturday 23/11/24 17:00-23:00 | Sunday 24/11/24 18:00-23:00 Over the past year, the 2024 LABA Barcelona fellows have studied ancient Jewish texts on the theme of “NIGHT” in LABA’s non-theological, non-ideological, open-minded and free-spirited house of study. They encountered stories and ideas which fertilized new art and culture. Join us for an experience of these creative

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    • Remembrance Ceremony: Honouring our Ancestors – Montjuïc old Cemetery, Barcelona.

      LABA BCN Fellow, Kevin Buckland, uses art, ceremony and study to raise awareness and new imaginaries around the forgotten medieval jewish cemetery on Montjuïc in Barcelona. On September 29th he will work with Yad Miriam to convene an annual ceremony and performance of remembrance to explore ideas of belonging-in-diaspora, tensions between political and traditional law,

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    • LABA BCN Tikkun Shavuot 2024

      Thanks to all LABA BCN fellows and all Tikkun Shavuot NIGHT participants, for a beautiful, memorable experience!  

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    • LABA Barcelona open call 2024

      Application for LABA 2024 fellowship program is now closed. Application dates: January 22nd- February 19th   LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Art and Culture   LABA brings together artists from all backgrounds and disciplines to study classical Jewish texts, experiment, and explore the futures of Jewish art and culture. LABA is a non-religious house of study

      Read more

    • Launching event of LABA Barcelona at Casa Adret, June 10th, 2023

      LABAbel – Art & Study event    June 10th, 2023, 19–22 hrs Casa Adret – Calle Salomo ben Adret 6, Barcelona. We are pleased to invite you to the launching event of Laba Barcelona, at Casa Adret LABA brings together artists from all backgrounds and disciplines, to study classical Jewish texts, to experiment and to explore

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    Friday, October 31 | 18:00-22:00
    LABA LIVE: Public Performances & Exhibition Closing Night
    Convent de Sant Agustí

    Exhibition on view: October 27-31, 17:00-20:00
    Capelles del Convent, Convent de Sant Agustí, Comerç 36, Barcelona

     

    PROGRAM AND REGISTRATION

     

    Change is the only constant — and yet we resist it, fear it, crave it.
    This year’s LABA Barcelona exhibition presents the creative outcomes of a year-long exploration of change — its paradoxes, resistances, and possibilities — shaped through months of study and dialogue around classical Jewish texts.

    The 2025 LABA Fellows explore change as both personal and collective — a movement through body and belief, reflection and relation, the intimate and the political.
    Their works confront questions of ethics, identity, and exile, tracing the fragile boundaries between the self and the world, within the complex realities of our time.

    In La Mirada, Ofer Ronen and Michael Gadish ask: How can one dance in times like these?
    The piece restores to music and dance their role as acts of resistance against despair, inviting us to close our eyes in order to truly see.

    In Maya Geller’s short film, Will to live, this gaze becomes intimate: in a small community garden, a young child meets an older local gardener — a gentle tale of exile and rootedness, and of the possibility to keep growing even in unfamiliar soil.

    In Cartografías del Viento, Michael Gadish, in collaboration with LABA fellow Fernando Cardona Pons, presents an illustrated book and storytelling game exploring how narratives are shaped by collective trauma, inviting us to reimagine diaspora not as loss but as home — a living condition of transformation.

    In La Voz de Muchas Aguas, Eyal (Lally) Bitton creates an audiovisual poem where the search for a divine voice becomes a meditation on perception and surrender.
    Sound fractures reality, dissolving the boundary between the listener and the world — not into darkness, but into a luminous, throbbing void.

    In Shmita, Laura Sofía Hernández Gil offers a site-specific performance inspired by the biblical sabbatical year — a time to let the land and the self rest. Through movement, vulnerability, and honesty, she explores change as a process of release: when identity sheds its old form to be reborn anew.

    In Trenat, Mónica Buzali Kalach creates an intimate, sensory space of memory and belonging.
    Words, scents, and objects become threads weaving between personal wounds and collective identity — an act of shared remembrance and repair. Her installation unfolds as a dialogue between what is inherited and what is reinvented, inviting visitors to add their own fragments to the collective weave.

    In Signs of Change, Fernando Cardona Pons transforms Jewish textual and symbolic heritage into the language of contemporary tattoo art.
    Presented as a tattoo-booth installation, his work turns the act of inscription into a ritual of transformation — change made visible on the skin.

    Finally, in Arqueología Especulativa de lo Bíblico, Gastón Lisak acts as an archaeologist of the impossible — excavating not soil, but scripture and imagination.
    Through 3D-printed sculptures, he gives form to objects lost between faith, myth, and matter — translating absence into presence, and language into creation.

    Together, these works compose a space of inquiry and transformation — an invitation to encounter change not as an idea, but as a living creative practice.

    LABA Barcelona Artistic Director & Curator: Nathalie Kertesz
    LABA Barcelona Resident Scholar: Dr. Zeev Maor

     

    Organized by LABA Barcelona in collaboration with Convent de Sant Agustí


    TIKKUN SHAVUOT NIGHT                   From the idea to the form 

    Work in Progress by LABA CHANGE artists

    June 1st, 2025 at 19:00, Casa Adret C/ Salomó Ben Adret 6, Barcelona.

    For this year’s Tikkun Leil Shavuot, LABA Barcelona reimagined the ancient tradition of all-night study through a contemporary, multidisciplinary lens. Hosted at Casa Adret, the event brought together LABA’s 2025 cohort of artists to present their works in progress—projects inspired by a year-long study of classical Jewish texts on the theme of Change. These artistic explorations, spanning performance, ritual, visual art, and participatory experience, offered a glimpse into creations that will be fully developed and premiered at the LABA Live event in late October.

    Participation began before the event through the invitation itself, which was a participatory invitation, which included a seven-day creative reflection challenge.

     

     

    The event was organized as part of the project “ReActMem: Rescue Memory – Activism, Arts and Public Remembrance”, which is being implemented by LABA together with twelve European partners, thanks to funding from the European Union under the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) program.

                                                                                 

    *
     Illustration in video by LABA fellow Fernando Cardona Pons
    Photography, Video & editing by Emmanuel Kertesz Maor

     

     


     

    LABA Barcelona Live event 2024

     

    Over the past year, the 2024 LABA Barcelona fellows have studied ancient Jewish texts on the subject of “Night” in LABA’s open-minded and free-spirited house of study.

    They encountered old stories and ideas which fertilized new art and culture. Watch this video to meet our fellows and get a taste of our 2024 LABA Live event!

     

     

     

    open section icon
    FELLOWS
    Hannah Berestizhevsky
    Laba Process/Project

    Hannah Berestizhevsky is an artist based in Spain who has exhibited her artworks nationally, in Israel, Germany and Italy. Many of her works explore the human relationship to nature, spirituality, and social construction. While she employs a variety of media in her artistic expression, Berestizhevsky primarily focuses on painting, video, and performance. She aims to create a meditative state to provoke thoughts and feelings on topics such as migration, camouflage, illusion of perception within the dimensions of time and space.

    https://www.mofuta.com

    Gisele Diana Cornejo Pérez
    Laba Process/Project

    I am a singer and performance creator, a researcher of human nature and a spiritual activist. For years, I have been devoted to a performative art practice that I experience as ritual. In my performances, I integrate music, performance, and new dramaturgies. The ritual dimension lies in the way I develop content (drawing on techniques of conscious trance and oracular practices); my aim is to explore the possibility of creating new realities by understanding and questioning the archetypes that shape our political-social unconscious, both individual and collective.

    https://www.giselecornejo.com

    Alan Grabinsky
    Laba Process/Project

    Writer and journalist based in Barcelona covering culture and Jewish life for international outlets. More than 100 articles published in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and many more (selection below). I’m passionate about diasporic identity, books, public spaces, archives, and literature. I’ve given talks about these and other issues in Mexico, Spain, Israel, England, Colombia, and the United States.  I´m also a coordinator of Barcelona’s Jewish Book Fair, Sefer.

    https://www.alangrabinsky.com

    Shell Hakim
    Laba Process/Project

    Shell Hakim is a writer, visual artist, and architect from Kibbutz Be’eri, currently based in Barcelona. Holding a B.Arch from Bezalel Academy (2022), his practice spans illustration, research, and writing. His work explores material approaches to mapping the world’s textures, using representation to reveal hidden meanings in overlooked narratives. He often examines the limits of descriptive systems, focusing on the tension between visual texture and written text. His current work employs layered graphite techniques to document objects that grow or decay beyond their predefined boundaries.

    https://shellhakim.netlify.app/


     

    Adam Iungman
    Laba Process/Project

    Adam is a visual artist working with large-scale self-portraits, street art, graffiti, and stop-motion animation. His work explores gender, the body, and the experience of not fitting into society’s expectations, inviting viewers to think and reflect.

     

    Mizar Martínez Álvarez & Elinor Indich Vaisman
    Laba Process/Project

    Mizar Martínez Álvarez is a dancer, choreographer, and visual artist whose practice is grounded in emergent systems and non-hierarchical processes. Rather than representing reality directly, she works with the structures that organize it – connections, rhythms, and internal tensions. Her body, the camera, and space function as elements within a living system in constant transformation. Her work moves between movement, image, and critical thought.

    Elinor Indich Vaisman is a dancer, visual-arts researcher, and educator working at the intersection of movement, image, and embodied inquiry. Trained as a professional dancer with BA and MA (honors) in Dance Theater and Visual Literacy, her practice combines performance and visual research to explore perception, identity, and lived experience. Currently based abroad, she re-examines her voice as a non-religious Jewish Israeli artist through movement and camera.

    Mizar Martínez Álvarez and Elinor Indich Vaisman work together as a duo within the LABA NAME cohort.

    https://mizarmartinezalvarez.com/

    Antonella Posso
    Laba Process/Project

    Argentine actress and educator based in Catalonia since 2020. Her practice emerges from an ongoing research into movement, the exploration of voice, and work across different languages. As an extension of this exploration, she develops a pedagogical practice in which performing arts become a tool for knowledge.

    www.antonellaposso.com

     

    Michael Sugarman
    Laba Process/Project

    Michael Sugarman is a storyteller with his roots in cinema. His filmmaking and interactive design work frequently incorporate elements of comedy, satire, and absurdity as a way of tapping into universal human experiences beneath tribal divisions. Raised in an Orthodox Jewish community in the US, Michael is especially interested in ways of reimagining and repurposing deeply-inscribed rituals, myths, and senses of the sacred.

    https://www.MichaelSugarman.tv

    Samuel Truzman
    Laba Process/Project

    Truzman is a Tropical Pop artistic project infused with Caribbean influences. It delivers a fresh and fun sound that flirts with deep reflection – songs filled with good vibes yet carrying a meaningful message beyond just melody, deeply influenced by Torah and Chassidut.

    Samuel Truzman, the project’s leader, is a Venezuelan artist and songwriter based in Barcelona. With over 18 years of musical experience and six years of artistic trajectory, he has established himself as a unique voice in the industry. Truzman’s music has been performed in various formats and countries, including Spain, Portugal, France, Guatemala, and Venezuela.

    To date, Truzman has released two studio LPs, one EP, and several singles. Currently, they are working on their third LP, produced by Latin Grammy winner Cheo Pardo. This upcoming album aims to refine the band’s identity, offering a more dynamic, vibrant, and fun fusion sound with diverse musical styles ranging from reggae and funk to ska and salsa.

    https://www.truzman.com/

    Danielle Zini
    Laba Process/Project

    Danielle Zini is a video and new media artist, curator, and researcher. She explores the intersections of technology, spirituality, and politics through film, performance, and AI,

    and is the founder of ZER0|1NE Digital Art Festival (2019–2024). Holding an MA in Art Policy and Criticism, her work examines randomness, creativity, and machine-human relationships in both theory and practice.

    linktr.ee/daniellezini

    Barcelona