Espiral – Glass Vase
by Magdalena Hart / Rain and Rivers · Barcelona, Spain

Magdalena Hart (UK / Uruguay) is a contemporary glass artist and designer based in Barcelona, and the founder of Rain and Rivers, a studio of sculptural glass jewelry and collectible glass objects. She hand-sculpts every Rain and Rivers ring, earring, glass and vase at the flame from borosilicate glass in her Barcelona studio at Difusions, so no two pieces are alike. The full collection is at rain-and-rivers.com and her artistic practice at magdalenahart.com.Hart practices porosity as a methodology that allows her to inhabit decomposition and sustain sensitivity within contexts of accelerated change and deep erosion. Her sculptural language is built from blown glass and the accumulation of electronic waste, intertwined with more-than-human collaborations: riverine, oceanic and estuarine waters, wild plants and polluted soils across Uruguay and Europe. From this dialogue she questions how fragility can generate care and how matter becomes language. The same tension between fluidity and rigidity, resistance and vulnerability, runs through her glass jewelry, which she approaches as wearable sculpture.She has lived and worked in Barcelona since 2018 and holds a Master's degree in Audiovisual Innovation and Interactive Environments from BAU, Barcelona (2019). She is currently in residence at Difusions, Hangar and Tandem x Casa R.A.R.O, and is a Maker Sherpa at the Centre Cívic Convent Sant Agustí. Her work has been presented at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, CosmoCaixa, Arts Santa Mònica, MIRA Festival, Madrid Design Festival, Barcelona Design Festival, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo of Uruguay.Her awards include the Barcelona Crea Research and Experimentation Grant at Hangar (Manglar Collective), the Digital and Electronic Art Grant from MEC Uruguay, the Montevideo Visual Arts Award and the Performing Arts Grant from Fonds Darstellende Künste (Akyute Collective). She is represented by Il·lacions Gallery in Barcelona, Adorno in Milan and Apoc in London, and has been interviewed by The New York Times, Metal Magazine and Art Connect. Since 2019 she has led the artistic duo Akyute. In 2023 she founded Rain and Rivers, born from her research into glassblowing, water and wearables, and co-founded Manglar, a transdisciplinary collective of Latin American artists and researchers at Hangar's WetLab.