"Art, at its very best, reminds me that there is a world out there that I not only belong to but trust - perhaps even love. Sandra Vázquez de la Horra's beeswax-dipped drawings of erupting women, mystical landscapes, and hallucinatory flora in The Awake Volcanoes at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, did just that. Oh, that old mystery of finding oneself reflected in the material fragments of someone else's private imaginary."
"After all these years and an untold number of visits to galleries and museums, it astonishes me anew when the adage proves true: that by following the strangest, most idiosyncratic contours of vision, it's possible to arrive at a general truth. Yes: contained within the particular, the universal. Why else would I see in the taupe figure at the center of the opening work, 'Volcánica (The Volcanic Woman)'(2023), composed of smoke and bubbles spewing from crimson volcanic nipples,"
Beeswax-dipped drawings and paper sculptures portray erupting women, mystical landscapes, and hallucinatory flora that conflate bodily intensity with environmental rupture. Materials include graphite, watercolor, gouache, and wax on paper, with accordion-folded paper sculptures and tactile surfaces emphasizing physical presence. Imagery features volcanic breasts, smoke and bubbles, cradled infants, and ritual motifs that blend Catholic iconography and Afro-Caribbean spiritual practices such as Santería. Political and spiritual histories inflect the work, producing a resonance that situates particular, idiosyncratic visions within broader universal concerns about exploitation of nature and the subordination of women.
Read at Hyperallergic
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