Artist Statement

Painting and drawing are the way I set relationships between images. I work with traditional drawing tools, reproduction, and paper as a modifiable surface; through handmade paper, printing, embossing, and graphite as means I aim to build series of concrete images, usually recognizable and figurative.
 

My work starts with mere observation, to then gathering different types of images in order to create my own cartography of depictions. This leads to questions related to a situation, a place, everyday subjects, and lately, tangible objects; usually because they have triggered images from the past or an emotional response close to the world that I have experienced. Sometimes I am interested in the nostalgic content of an image, the act of remembrance or the impression built in the gaze of another observer.
 

As a Colombian that has decided to emigrate, I started to wonder about the sense of belonging. My questions have grown from the uncomfortable feelings of knowing little and feeling like I do not have the right to talk about the nation's past. Drawn by the idea of power structures left over from colonialism, how they relate across the history of our countries, I decided to work using imagery from mostly Colombian monuments dedicated to the figures from the colonial period as  subject matter. Linking them with foreign monuments and modifying their image, I wonder how their similarities, meanings and ideals linger on as symbols, and where the power and relevance that they carry resides.