In 1974, when I came to the United States from my native Argentina, a vast feeling of isolation and displacement began to haunt me.
This dislocation and a pervasive sense of loss led me to reconsider my identity as a woman and as Latin American. These themes slowly found their way into my artistic idiom as I move from the medium of painting to printmaking and pastels. I began to assemble a series of collages in which I juxtaposed quotations from Violeta Parra, Pablo Neruda, Mario Benedetti, along with the visual representation of collective figures joined in struggle. Later, a more individualized form of expression emerged in which I represented society’s marginalized figures in search of self-definition, in particular, I turned my attention to the representation of women.
My female figures are bold, dramatic, sensual, often filling the greater space of the paper as if to convey an obsessive search for identity that moves against social expectations. It is as if these women refuse to be contained within a single statement of form; their bodies almost scream out the boundaries of the paper.
Indeed, while in the process of planning my prints and pastels, I often find myself reflecting on the many ironies of our personal lives, in which our forms of self-definition are almost always challenged by a cynical, distant observer. Is a real resistant possible for individuals isolated in our society? Can women impose themselves in a hostile, unwelcoming environment?
As a partial response, I turn to the grotesque to express these fundamental contradictions. My female characters may be seen with multiple arms and legs; they appear to be deformed or dismembered as they struggle for self-affirmation and survival.
I many of my works I insist upon the drama of individual women, in others I locate my female subjects in their engagement with the wider community. The anguish of women in family life and the integration of women in a broader social struggle are some of my concerns. These themes are translated even in my recent prints, where I test the boundaries of color, form, and movement from which our power and resistances emerge.