Storyteller & Curator
Artist & Designer

Email: monicallagus@gmail.com
Instagram: @monicallag

Storytelling is at the heart of my practice, flowing through art, film, design, and music. I move across multiple languages, including curation, art direction, experimental filmmaking, and the construction of real or imagined spaces, exploring how stories take visual and emotional form. I develop conceptual and sensorial worlds where each image, space, or object becomes a fragment of a larger narrative, connecting the personal with the collective.

In a time woven from memory, somewhere between Barcelona and Berlin...

My journey as an artist and designer began at Escola Massana, where I studied Fine Arts, and continued at BAU Design College of Barcelona, where I pursued a degree in Design. True to my nonconformist nature and to the spirit of a generation shaped by versatility, my curiosity led me to explore interconnected fields—audiovisual communication, graphic design, fashion, spatial and product design—because I have always believed that learning across diverse disciplines would give me the autonomy to create my own identity.

While studing, I co-founded the collective space M10, a place where I began exploring and developing my own artistic language. There, I held my first group exhibition, with my studio friends, at TKM Room. Since then I’ve been moving between art and design, navigating between the tangible and the digital.

As an artist, I worked in art direction and set design, embracing the most creative and instinctive aspect of my practice—experimenting with the materials, the sculptural dimension, and the manual process. Alongside my collaboration with other artist, I contributed to art direction projects for brands such as Chloé, The Rayy, and Kara.

As a designer, my focus has been mainly on visual communication and aesthetics—on the search for harmony, balance, and clarity that give shape to a project’s identity. I see design as a process to materialize conceptual ideas into form and experience, through methodology, strategy and coherence—a way to communicate meaningful ideas within contemporary culture, and serve as a tool for education and crítical thinking.

In fashion, my interest was driven by the desire to learn how to make my own clothes and to preserve the generational knowledge I cultivated alongside my grandmother—my master, a dressmaker and pattern maker—and my professors. The do-it-yourself approach gave me a sense of autonomy and independence, freeing me from consumer culture and helping me build an ethic aligned with my ideals.

After developing my sewing and pattern skills, I decided to create Silk, a collection of unique silk scarves where fabric became a canvas for storytelling and creative expression—a project in which I took on the full creative direction from concept to production. The project emerged from an intention to start an independent, self-sustaining business as a freelancer, one that could support and finance my work. During this time, I participated in a few design markets in Berlin at UY Studio.

Moving to Berlin on February 2022 marked a turning point in my life. In the time of my stay, I worked as a freelance designer, collaborating with music labels and designing websites, while continuing with Silk and beginning a new artistic practice.

Die Improvisation emerged throughout my time in Berlin, unfolding alongside my own experience of moving from home to home. I began creating miniature scenographies that could narrate a story through the spaces themselves. Each one became a fragment of memory, a small territory that acts as a temporary refuge responding to my emotional and existential states. Through these improvised, ephemeral worlds, I mirror my inner landscapes and evoke my needs—rooted in security, belonging, and fragility—with a sense of playfulness.

My work naturally expands into film, as characters begin to take shape, telling their own stories and inhabiting these miniature worlds. My films The Third Mind and Brown Noise are existential explorations that blend poetics with experimentation. These animated short films present themselves as mental films—constructed in the mind, made up of internal dialogues and inner characters, reflecting the questions and conflicts one has encountered in life—observed with distance, transformed into stories, and offered as mirrors in which others might see themselves.

Another compass in my path has always been music. In the beginning, as a designer, I shaped the visual identity of the queer collective (S)Punk, helping to establish House of (S)Punk, one of the first queer techno labels in Barcelona. I continue to create visuals for their releases, albums and parties. My work later expanded to Japan and Berlin through collaborations with the label Mana, where I design animations, flyers, and contribute to events, bridging cultures through images and sound. Today, I am part of Modern Obscure Music, as a curator of artists and events and preparing the label’s 2026 tour in Japan and Korea as tour manager.

At the core of all these paths is storytelling. Whether in art, film, design, or music, I create narratives and visual languages that hold identity and memory. My practice is more than designing—it is about weaving stories: my own, and those that echo within others.

*Cv and Portfolio upon request.

^{For all inquiries, work, commissions and letters, please reach out via email: monicallagus@gmail.com}

MÒNICA LLAG

︎︎︎ CREATIVE & ART DIRECTION

ISOLA

Set design and Art direction x Gabriela Richardson

^{Set design and Art direction x Gabriela Richardson}