20th - 21st Century Spanish

Bárbara Allende Gil de Biedma took her artistic name from a work by the painter El Hortelano, an invented map of stars in which there was a constellation called Ouka Lele. She borrowed it as her nom de plume in order to separate her personal and professional lives. In 1999 she added an extra “e”, turning it into Ouka Leele.

She spent her childhood between Madrid and San Rafael. Her religious education put her in contact with a magical aspect that she would extrapolate to her work, explaining why in many cases her photos are underpinned by religious themes.

Her passions from a very young age were drawing and painting, until she enrolled at the Photocentro photography school in 1976, following the advice of a friend. Here she picked up the different techniques that would lead her to later fame. However, her enduring need to paint meant that she used photography as a support, creating a personal language of her own that theatricalised the image.

She recalls that she sold her first drawings at the flea market in Estepona, where one of her buyers predicated that she would have a brilliant future as an artist. She went on to have her first photographic exhibition in Barcelona with the suite Peluquería, in 1979. One year later she moved to New York to continue training and in 1981 she returned to Madrid where she became actively involved in the new countercultural movement known as the Movida, of which she was one of its most famous exponents. That same year she made the hats for Pedro Almodóvar’s movie Labyrinth of Passion. International recognition arrived soon afterwards. In 1987 she exhibited at the Sao Paulo Biennial and had a retrospective exhibition at the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art.

Worth highlighting among the many awards she received is the National Photography Prize in 2005. In 2010 Rafael Gordon directed a film on her life, Through the Eyes of Ouka Leele, nominated for the category of best feature-length documentary at the Goya Awards in 2010 and winner in 2011 of the Alfa y Omega Prize for best feature-length documentary from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Rome. In 2012 she received the Silver Medal from the Region of Madrid.