Chilean artist Sandra Vásquez de la Horra (born 1967, Viña del Mar, Chile) unites transnational and indigenous perspectives in her multidisciplinary artistic practice. Her oeuvre, primarily drawing and painting, but also film and performance art, encompasses complex events, stories, rituals, and beliefs rooted both in her upbringing in Chile and in the many years she spent living in Germany.
“Soy Energía,” her first institutional retrospective in Europe, is dedicated to her experimental practice, focusing on her spatial, energetic, and global thinking. Based on the multi-perspective nature of her work, the exhibition invites visitors to encounter the artist's spiritual cosmos, which reconciles humanity and nature, and celebrates her commitment to self-determination, women's rights, and human rights. Experiences of persecution, oppression, and migration play a crucial role in this. Sandra Vásquez de la Horra has developed a unique exhibition practice that draws on her work with organic materials, extends scenographic approaches into the space, and conveys profoundly moving existential experiences.
Vásquez de la Horra's early series of works were created during the Pinochet regime in Chile from the mid-1980s to the 1990s, exploring the body and its secular context through signs, fragments, and language. She creates drawings of fantastical hybrid creatures with human, animal, and plant features, alluding to the incompatibility of history and morality. These works, soaked in beeswax—a technique she has employed since 1997—are presented in experimental arrangements to create multi-perspective narratives and spatial constellations. During her early years in Europe, Vásquez de la Horra created video performances, which are now being shown for the first time. In these works, she processes biographical as well as historically significant events and themes such as loneliness, separation, and racism. The exhibition connects the historical dimension of her work with its development into the present day.
Curated by Jana Baumann with Marlene Mützel.
Photo by Markus Tretter
