Kilian Lavernia

Doctor en Filosofía

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Biography, Thought and Works

Jean-Jacques Rousseau always liked to swim against the current, like an enfant terrible who let himself be swept along by no fashion or opinion, perhaps because he understood philosophy as an existential rather than a professional commitment. He grew up in the company of many readings in which "that free and republican spirit took shape, that indomitable and proud character, incapable of bearing the yoke and servitude" (Rousseau, 1997, 34).

Kilian Lavernia

Miguel de Unamuno: A Philosophical Approach

The thought of Miguel de Unamuno revolves around the concrete human being, the person of "flesh and bone," and his anguished struggle between reason and life. From the craving for immortality to faith as a creative impulse, his philosophy turns contradiction into a vital engine, proposing a way of existence that finds meaning in tension, doubt and the desire to endure.

Kilian Lavernia

Marina Abramović: Biography, works and exhibitions

At first glance, the work of Marina Abramović (Belgrade, 1946) would appear to conform to that hackneyed old saying that the best art is always about the self. However, as with so many other clichés about contemporary art, this serves only to limit the scope, richness and originality of this particular artist who, since day one over four decades ago, has made her own human body into a vital space for experimentation, her raw materials and a battlefield, even. Abramović herself is, effectively, the work itself. But only in as much as one must then incorporate this variable into a more complex equation, after pioneering reflection on the ultimate meaning of her performances which, after forty years of creative exploration, has consolidated her place and her identity within postmodern discourse.

Kilian Lavernia

Tracey Emin. Biography, Works and Exhibitions

“I only survived thanks to art. It gave me faith in my own existence." And this is how bluntly Tracey Emin (Surrey, 1963) writes in her explosive autobiography Strangeland (Sceptre, 2005; Spanish translation published 2016), a collection of personal writings and reminiscences that allow us an insight into an undoubtedly complex persona. And this without falling into the trap of clichéd judgements on her provocativeness or exhibitionism, precisely because her personal history and her artistic identity are intertwined so fascinatingly and so irreverently. She has made what was once cutting-edge ~ the merging of intimacy, art and life to make something insoluble ~ into a new, confessional-style, conventional artform. For this reason, Emin's artistic output cannot be fully understood without reference to her life and this is not to state the obvious just for the sake of it.

Kilian Lavernia