Los pensamientos (The Thoughts)

The Awake Volcanoes Exhibition Guide

While continuing to draw transforming and morphing human figures, in the 2010s Sandra Vásquez de la Horra began exploring different compositions for her images. She also started to flank her figures with words in Spanish, English, German, and Italian. These words may arouse curiosity and instill discomfort. It may cause us to wonder what the artist’s intended relationship between the images and their text is.

Since this body of work began, the artist has experimented with its display. Here, she creates “clouds” of images that establish relationships between the figures, like a family tree. The connections we make between the images and text lead each of us to different understandings of her work. This series reminds us that writing is an exercise in drawing, just as drawing is strongly linked to writing.

The Secret of Your Hair
El secreto de tu pelo
2000
Video with sound
Duration: 1 min. 28 sec.
© and courtesy of the artist

While studying in Germany between 2002 and 2003, Vásquez de la Horra began working in performance, photography, and video. In The Secret of Your Hair, an animated stop-motion video, we follow a line accompanied by the sounds of a guitar. Traveling between the familiar and unfamiliar, the piece is an elegy to the line and how it can bring us to so many different places in only a few seconds.

An angel with short, dark hair leans at an acute sixty-five-degree angle atop the base of a wooden coffin. Strings radiate down from the angel’s fingers and disappear into the top portion of the coffin. The coffin has four feet, each resembling the foot of a different animal.

Polvo fuiste y en polvo te convertirás
Dust You Were, and Dust You Shall Become
2012
Drypoint soft-ground etching on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

A woman stands atop a hill in the foreground with one hand behind her head and the other outstretched pointing to a large, bearded, floating head in the midground. Rings encircle the head at the center of its nose giving it a celestial appearance. Snow-peaked mountains in the background.

El Gigante
The Giant
2012
Drypoint soft-ground etching on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

The palm of a hand outstretched from the right edge of the composition, fingers pointing to the left. A rainbow emerges from the center of the palm and extends to the top left corner. It is shaded monochromatically in terracotta-orange.

De donde nace el arcoiris
Where the Rainbow Is Born
2012
Drypoint soft-ground etching on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

The top half of a human figure in profile facing right. An orange, spine-like line runs up the back and ends at the ear. Nine thin gray lines radiate from the eyes to the top right-hand edge of the composition. The words El Oido Interior run from top to bottom and overlap the figure’s shoulder.

El oido interior
The Inner Ear
2012
Drypoint soft-ground etching on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

A female figure with a visible fetus squats with her shoulders back and arms bent at the elbow against a square pyramid with the words La construcion de la realidad in an orange red. The figure’s dark hair connects to the tip of the pyramid.

La construcción de la realidad
Constructing Reality
2012
Drypoint soft-ground etching on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

A woman stands in profile facing left with her hand resting on her stomach. Some of her organs are visible and colored in red. She has a tail with a black sphere at the tip. To the right of her back, the words Retrato de mi madre.

Retrato de mi madre
Portrait of My Mother
2012
Drypoint soft-ground etching on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

A figure in profile facing left from the chest up. The face is red, and long, dark hair is pulled up in two braids that drape over a rectangular cube. The words El castigo ejemplar in red run from the top to the bottom right of the cube.

El castigo ejemplar
The Exemplary Punishment
2012
Drypoint soft-ground etching on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

A woman with dark hair pulled back in elaborate braids sits back with her knees pointing to the right. She has only one arm on the right side of the composition, and it points upward in a finger-gun position with a red lightning bolt coming out of the pointer. The word “Lady” is at her back, and the word “Godiva” runs along her knees.

Lady Godiva
2012
Drypoint soft-ground etching on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

Side profile of a female figure facing right. Her arms and legs are outstretched to form a V-like shape. Her hair is styled to look like a rose. The words “Una rosa es una” run from her feet up her body to her fingers, and the word “rosa” is to her right between her hands and feet.

Una rosa es una rosa
A Rose Is a Rose
2012
Drypoint soft-ground etching on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

A slender figure with an angel wing, a skeletal face, and an outstretched arm floats head-down toward the bottom right-hand corner of the composition. The figure is white with shading against a dark background.

El Angel de la Muerte
The Angel of Death
2012
Drypoint soft-ground etching on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

A head emerges through an opening on the left-hand side of the composition and rests facing upward on a wooden plank. Two dark, long braids hang over the edge of the plank.

La condenada
The Condemned Woman
2012
Drypoint soft-ground etching on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

When Borch Editions, a Danish producer and publisher of fine art prints, invited Vásquez de la Horra to make a series of engravings, she returned to the drypoint technique she used for her first works in the 1980s—more than two decades earlier. Inspired by the female body and calling attention to how text can direct our interpretation of images, she continues her tradition of using words to confuse and intrigue rather than to provide a definitive understanding of her work.

The back of a human figure with arms outstretched and bent upward at the elbow in a goalpost position. They stand on a white staircase surrounded by flames, with blue water in the background. Text at the bottom reads, “Y este mar que tranquilo nos baña,” (And This Sea, So Tranquil, That Bathes Us).

Y este mar que tranquilos nos baña
And This Sea, So Tranquil, That Bathes Us
2019
Graphite pencil, watercolor, gouache (opaque watercolor), and wax on paper
© and courtesy of the artist. Photo: Trevor Good

The words in this work refer to Chile’s national anthem, composed in 1819. The song’s original lyrics are “y ese mar que tranquilo te baña” (and this sea that quietly bathes you). Vásquez de la Horra changes “you” to “us,” inviting us closer to her narrative and provoking our reflection: where does this character jump to? Is there a fire pushing them to dive? What is below these waters?

Hemisferios
Hemispheres
2002
Video with sound
Duration: 35 min. 59 sec.
© and courtesy of the artist

In this performance made for the camera, Vásquez de la Horra simultaneously writes on both sides of a notebook. With her eyes blindfolded and using charcoal, she stains not only areas of the notebook but also her own body. In probably her most explicit work concerning Chile’s history and the authoritarian Pinochet regime (1973–90), the artist writes phrases that recall the repressive times she experienced in her home country.

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.