Metropolitan Culture Corner: Natalia Revoniuk

Our guest this month on the Metropolitan Culture Corner is Ukrainian artist Natalia Revoniuk. While she splits her time between Ukraine and the UK, she was just in Barcelona, exhibiting her work as a part of the 2024 Woman’s Essence international art showcase, where she was one of the recipients of the Woman Art Award, which highlights notable female visual artists from all over the world. 

Natalia was born in Lviv, Ukraine, and moved to the UK in 2022. Her world travels have taken her to 85 countries; she has carved a distinctive artistic path with her paintings that combine traditional painting with concepts ranging from the modern to the ancient, from graphic design to dot art similar to the Cucuteni-Trypillya people, and what she calls Transformational Energy Art and Visionary Art.  Natalia has had or participated in over 35 solo or group exhibitions in Italy, the UK, Turkey, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, and Spain; she is also the art curator of the platform Forum Ukraine. Her motto is to leave the world better than we found it, reflecting her commitment to using art as a catalyst for positive change.  

Last month we spoke with documentary film and television director, producer, editor, cameraman and much more, Marcel Llorens. Born in Barcelona, Marcel’s love of all things cinema was sparked by watching old movies with his father. He studied audiovisual communication at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and the Institut Ramon Llull, and went on to work on publicity shoots as a freelancer for companies such as Levi's, HP, Samsung, Puma, Ticketmaster, Nokia, Garmin, and others. He would later work as cameraman and editor for various television programs for TV3, Interzona.tv and Movistar+, but discovered his true calling when he started directing and filming documentaries.

His current project, a documentary about the iconic Mexican song "La Llorona," has not only gained him international recognition even before it’s been officially released—it just won the CaixaForum+ and IN-EDIT music documentary film festival competition this year—but it also changed his life completely. Marcel now splits his time between Barcelona and Mexico City, where over the past four years he has worked on a documentary for Mexican television station Canal 22, music videos for artists such as La Malinche, La Bruja de Texcoco, Antonio Hidalgo and more, as well as his project La Llorona El Documental. Marcel and his family are also involved with the non-profit organization Ni Una Menos, which works to raise awareness for the thousands of women who have been murdered or gone missing in Mexico.

Stay tuned to Metropolitan’s YouTube channel and social media to make sure you don’t miss a single episode of our monthly interview series! We’ve got a great lineup in store for you in 2024. You can also watch the full archive of previous interviews on our official YouTube channel, or listen to all the MCC interviews as free podcasts on Soundcloud. Be sure to follow Metropolitan on Facebook: @BCNMetropolitan, Twitter: @bcnmetropolitan and Instagram: @barcelonametropolitan.