Leire Lacunza Miranda

What if Charlie Chaplin, in Modern Times, picked up one of the nuts he’s tightening on the assembly line and began to draw a tiny landscape on it? He would focus on placing every detail, denying the productive rhythm of the factory. Through tangles, cuts, and overlaps, he would transform the nut, making it look like a piece of jewellery. This act of escapism resonates in the work of Leire Lacunza Miranda (1996, Basque Country), who uses a scalpel, screws, or plastic beads to cover LED tubes, windows, and ceilings. In doing so, she questions the despotic aesthetic gaze that dictates what to look at and what not to.

At MORPHO, Leire will explore the traces of iconoclasm in Antwerp through the gestures that define her drawing practice: cutting, crossing out, perforating, and covering up. Historically, these actions have been used to censor images for repressive purposes or to attack them in a vindictive way. Known as iconoclasm, they are linked to a desire to break through the image and the symbolic, and to bring down its power. Starting from the Beeldenstorm of 1566, she will search for the material traces of this event that remain in the city, while reflecting on how these iconoclastic gestures appear within her own practice.

Leire studied Fine Arts and Painting at the University of the Basque Country. She has held residencies at Shangyuan Art Museum, BilbaoArte, Tabakalera, and Dinamoa, and has received APA. Grants for Artistic Practice (eremuak) and the Plastic and Visual Arts Grant from the Basque Government. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions, including performance, writing, and collaborations with other artists. In 2025 she presented The World is a Picture of the World, an action in Arrigorriaga's city hall square. In 2023 she published El fin del no. La muerte futuro., a self-published artist book.