The Awake Volcanoes Exhibition Guide

Meet Sandra Vásquez de la Horra in her studio and learn more about her and her artistic practice.

Duration: 5 min. 55 sec.

Sandra Vásquez de la Horra in Her Studio, 2023, by Francisca Saez Agurto in collaboration with Inti Gallardo, Elo Kolln, Pablo Hassmann, and Pablo Cornejo

Sandra Vásquez de la Horra (Chilean, born 1967; works and lives in Berlin) experiments with drawing and other media, playing with notions of fantasy, desire, and transcendence to explore relationships between the human body and nature. These concepts and her interests in biology, history, and iconography are constants in her artistic practice, which spans nearly four decades. From miniature to monumental and from explosions of color to black-and-white figures enshrined in beeswax, she calls our attention to the tension and transformation of ourselves and the environment.

Sandra Vásquez de la Horra: The Awake Volcanoes is the artist’s first solo museum show in a United States museum and the first survey of her career to date. Her visceral images invite us to reflect on the human body and the world around and within us.

All artworks are courtesy of the artist, unless otherwise noted.

Late un fuego allí dentro (A Fire Beats Within)

On a small drawing from 1992, below an erupting volcano, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra wrote “Late un fuego allí dentro” (a fire beats within). The phrase refers to human nature as much as it does the landscape. In the artist’s work, spaces that seem like romantic paradise are not isolated. They only exist in relation to humanity. In some works, this relationship is seen within landscapes, while in others this association takes place within the human body—silhouettes of reclining people are likened to the outlines of rocky angles and mountains.

From the stillness of icy peaks and the supposed rational control of the human psyche, there is a feeling of desire waiting to explode. Within all of us, within every mountain, there is the potential of a volcano. Whether it awakens is only a matter of time.

Front view of the artwork. A 3D paper sculpture cutout and folded accordion-style in the shape of a nude woman lying on her back with her knees bent upwards. She holds a small baby between her breasts. They are shaded in neutral tones of tan, brown, and gray.

Back view of the artwork. A 3D paper sculpture cutout and folded accordion-style in the shape of a nude woman lying on her back with her knees bent upwards. She holds a small baby between her breasts. They are colored in bright shades of orange, magenta, and purple.

Del Sol naciente
From the Rising Sun
2023
Graphite pencil, watercolor, and wax on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Gunter Lepkowski

In the last ten years, Vásquez de la Horra has been using paper not only as a surface for her drawings but as a sculptural element. Stiffened by beeswax and loosely folded, the products this extremely delicate handcraft suggest a dialogue between the female body and mountain ranges. These bodies sometimes relate to different moments in the cycle of life, like the pleasure of sex or the beauty of motherhood. These cycles can directly connect us to nature, its many beginnings, and its many endings.

Volver a ti
Coming Back to You
2023
Graphite pencil, watercolor, and wax on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Gunter Lepkowski

La dormida
She Sleeps
2021
Graphite pencil and wax on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Gunter Lepkowski

A human-like figure stands with hands on hips in the foreground atop another reclining human figure that spews bubbles upward. Teal-blue water in the midground. In the background, several volcanoes spew bubbles upward.

El despertar de un volcán
The Awakening of a Volcano
2019
Graphite pencil, watercolor, gouache (opaque watercolor), and wax on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Eric Tschernow

In El despertar de un volcán, volcanoes erupt across a mountainous landscape. This piece echoes Vásquez de la Horra’s early-career drawings of Chile’s different landscapes and environments. The mountains’ silhouettes remind us of the human body, with mouths and nipples ejecting colorful substances and generating bubbles. This dreamlike approach to the landscape and the human body is a central interest across the artist’s work.

A landscape with a gray-blue body of water in the foreground, trees and mountains in the background, and a maroon tinted sky. — **Paisaje Costero**
**Coastal Landscape**
1992
Graphite pencil and oil paint on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

A landscape with a periwinkle body of water in the foreground and green and gray mountains in the background. A red sky above. — **Cumbre del Mauco**
**Mauco Peak**
1992
Graphite pencil and oil paint on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

A landscape of the Atacama Desert, with a blue lake in the center. — **Ruta Atacama**
**The Atacama Road**
1993
Graphite pencil and oil paint on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

A landscape with a gray-blue body of water in the midground and trees and mountains in the background. A faint satellite tower in the top-center. A brick-red sky above.

A colorful landscape with abstract shapes in the foreground, and snow peaked mountains in the background.

A landscape with a blue body of water in the foreground, and purple mountains in the background spewing a yellow substance into a teal-blue sky. Underneath the landscape, black, handwritten text reads: Los Volcanes Despiertos, (The Awake Volcanoes).

Peñuelas
1992
Graphite pencil and oil paint on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

Los nevados
The Snowy Peaks
1992
Graphite pencil and oil paint on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

Los volcanes despiertos
The Awake Volcanoes
1992
Graphite pencil and oil paint on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

At the beginning of her career, Vásquez de la Horra was deeply interested in the variety of Chile’s topographies and landscapes. She traveled constantly. During her trips, she made many observational drawings experimenting with colors, exaggerating details, and expanding the scenes from depictions of the real into something fictional. Even on a small scale, drawing can help us pay attention to the details of nature.

Note that one of the drawings in this case, Los volcanes despiertos, gives us the exhibition title: The Awake Volcanoes. Another work, Late un fuego allí dentro (A Fire Beats Within), provides us with the name of this section.

A landscape with a green plain in the foreground, and mountains and trees in the background. A brick-red sky above. — **Paisaje otoñal**
**Autumn Landscape**
1992
Graphite pencil and oil paint on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

A sparse landscape with a gray satellite tower on the left, an erupting volcano on the right, and five airplanes spanning the top of the composition. On the right, cursive, handwritten text overlaps the landscape at a ninety-degree angle and reads: “Late un fuego allí dentro” (A fire beats within). — **Late un fuego allí dentro**
**A Fire Beats Within**
1992
Graphite pencil and oil paint on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

A landscape featuring a turquoise-blue river running from the right-hand side to the center of the composition, surrounded by tan desert. Three gray, birdlike or airplane shaped forms span the top of the scene. Handwritten, cursive writing on the left and right of the landscape. — **Diario de viaje**
**Travel Diary**
1992
Graphite pencil and oil paint on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

Two similar panoramic landscapes stacked on top of one another. The top features a large gray airplane in the foreground and a smaller one in the top left corner over a yellow landscape with a green sky. The bottom features four smudged and blurry airplanes over a similar backdrop. — **Los viajantes**
**The Travelers**
1992
Graphite pencil and oil paint on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

A sculpture made of manila colored paper. It is cube-shaped with a short, square pyramid on top, making it resemble a small house. The exterior features volcanoes spewing a substance into the sky, and a female figure as a volcano.

Entre cordilleras
Between Mountain Ranges
2014
Graphite pencil and wax on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Cordia Schlegelmilch

In her exploration of paper as a sculptural material, Vásquez de la Horra developed a series of tiny houses that bring to mind dollhouses and architectural studies. In this series, she explores symbols and notions of motherhood, birth, and the body and how they relate to both the timeless and ever-changing nature of landscapes.

Exhibition Guide Sections

Sandra Vásquez de la Horra: The Awake Volcanoes is organized by the Denver Art Museum. Support is provided by the donors to the Annual Fund Leadership Campaign and the residents who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). Promotional support is provided by 5280 Magazine and CBS Colorado.