Film and video installations, photography, performance, and printed matter have been at the core of Adrià Julià’s practice. Julià studies the evasive language of images as a means of representation and reception of personal and collective historical events. His critique of opticality and visuality points to the reliance on images in the act of negotiating memory, resistance, displacement, and survival.
Julià is currently investigating early photography and film technologies as they relate to processes of erosion and subjugation in the Americas.
His solo exhibitions include “Not Even the Dead Will Survive” at Pinacoteca São Paulo, "Think of It as Money!" at Contemporary Art Center of University of California Irvine, "Conquest of the Useless" at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona, “Hot Iron” at the Miró Foundation of Barcelona, “Hot Iron Marginalia” at the Tabakalera in San Sebastian, “Indications for Another Place” at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, “La Villa Basque, Vernon, California” at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach and at Artists Space in New York City, “A Means of Passing the Time” at LAXART in Los Angeles, “No Place Like Home” at Seoul’s Insa Art Space, “Truc Trang Walls” at The Room Gallery University of California in Irvine, “Love. Destiny. Heroes.” at Dan Gunn in Berlin, “Cat on the Shoulder” at 18th Street Art Center in Santa Monica, “Notes on the Missing Oh” at Project Art Centre in Dublin, and “Ruinas del Habla” at Galería Soledad Lorenzo in Madrid. Julià has also participated in group shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid at Witte de With in Rotterdam, at De Appel in Amsterdam, at Seoul’s Museum of Art, at the Generali Foundation in Vienna, and at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. He participated in the 9th Lyon Biennial, the 29th São Paulo Biennial with the performance “Ruinas da Fala” at the Teatro Arena, the 7th Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, the Jakarta Biennale XIII, and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2014.
In 2015, Adrià Julià was named a Guna S. Mundheim Visual Arts Fellow by the American Academy in Berlin. Through the years, he has received substantial grants from Art Matters, the American Center Foundation, the Botín Foundation, the California Community Foundation, and the La Caixa Fellowship program. In 2002, he was awarded the Altadis Prize. His work has been featured in Artforum, Frieze, Flash Art, X-Tra, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Osmos, and Camera Austria, to mention few.