Teaching
European Doctor in Learning Sciences at the Sorbonne University (Paris-13) and in Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona (UB). For his pictorial and set design works, made between 2002 and 2006, he has received the Extraordinary Degree Award (2007).
He is Painting Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the UB an he teaches «The History of Graphic Illustration» at EINA, Centre for Design and Art attached to the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and ELISAVA, Barcelona School of Design and Engineering (Universitat Pompeu Fabra). He also conducts a Professional Workshop on 'Scenography and Design of Dramatized Spaces' at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona, in concert with Concertante International Music Academy of Barcelona and Gran Teatre del Liceu Opera House.
Research
As a passionate explorer of the border between art and play, in 2007 he undertook his ambitious study on the history and semiotics of toys and playthings thanks to a Research Grant of the Generalitat de Catalunya (2007-2010).
From 2008 he has been part of the EXPERICE Laboratory (Universités Paris-8 and Paris-13), specialized in childhood's material culture, under the direction of Gilles Brougère and Michel Manson. From those years of study in Paris, his doctoral thesis The Artist and the Toy: trips to the western imaginaries, from Antiquity to the Romanticism (2011), distinguished with the Extraordinary Doctorate Award (2012) and the Doctors' Senate Award of the UB (2014).
He is an ITRA member (International Toy Research Association). He has been part of several teams and research projects funded by the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, as well as international projects of the Mexican Government and the French Ministry of Education. He has also been hired as a research member in projects on Art and the Human face by the Bosch i Gimpera Foundation.
Oriol Vaz combines his artistic and teaching career with academic research activities, focusing on the cultural objects of childhood (toys, illustrated books, furniture and children's rooms) and its representation through the history of art.
Based on the Annales School's historiographical methods, he delves into the history of toys, their design, the architecture and history of children's literature, but also into the fundamental theory of the notions of play, and its correlation with the Western spiritualities from Antiquity to our time. When exploring the toy with the telescope of the Humanities, he has come to define this humble object as « the best symbolic vessel of our wonder experiences, as natural in a child's life as latent in the adults creations of all times ».
Before the period of scepticism the current culture is going through, he also investigates the iconoclastic phenomenon that impacts on modern art and gives its current shape. Both in his lectures and publications, he resorts to philosophy of art, sociology and contemporary art criticism.
