It’s a series of paintings that explore ideas about landscape through the lens of relational ontology and object oriented ontology. I generate interspecies, human-plant kinships in order to conjure metaphors that help me relate to the geographic space from where I work, think and propose my art practice. Through a material process I propose paintings that come together as assemblages. These paintings embody different material layers that also act as conceptual layers. The materiality is the gravitational force of the paintings. They are not only painted, its not the touch or the brushstroke what characterizes them. I stage a game between painting and collage where the material edges are also formal spaces in the composition.
The collaged elements in the paintings are hand made cabuya paper, cabuya its the fiber that comes from the Agave plant. The Andean Agave is a symbolic plant from the Ecuadorian Andes. It has had a cultural relevance both in popular culture as well as a motive throughout the painting history of the country. The plant has a multiplicity of uses that has woven it through the cultural fabric of the Andes. The plant is very generous and most of it´s body can be used, its wood is good for musical instruments and construction, its flowers are edible and from its heart a sweet honey called Chawar Mishki emerges.
The substance of the paper situates the paintings in a geographic coordinate and context. In a material dimension the landscape is embodied in the painting. For example in the painting called Penco the paper acts in the painting as symbol and matter. Penco is a mix media painting made with acrylic, oil and marbled cabuya paper on canvas. In the painting a biomorphic character emerges in between layers of paint and paper. The paper is used as a formal pictorial space in the composition and the materiality situates geographically the painting.
The method by which the piece has been painted acts as the stratification of the process; in a way you can see the archeology of the object. This fills not only the image but also the materiality of the object with meaning, the final piece comes to be from a conceptualized painting process.
