Alumna Catalina Viejo Lopez de Roda Opens New Exhibition at HallSpace

Alumna Catalina Viejo Lopez de Roda (‘01), has a new exhibition coming to John Colan’s HallSpace gallery. Self Care features new drawings, paintings, prints, and animations.

Viejo’s work focuses on images taken from her memories, dreams, and experiences of female intimacy. Dealing with a persistent virus has instigated a new direction in Viejo’s work, with the central theme being Self Care. A single woman lives in isolation in each of her drawings, paintings and animations. These women inhabit wild environments and have developed a symbiotic relationship with the landscape. The female figures embody the wild woman archetype and reflect the landscape around them: arms open up like flowers, legs mirror river bends, bottoms mimic hills.

To experience her work in its entirety, the viewer must often interact with Viejo’s art physically. Double-sided dioramas encourage the viewer to rotate around the work and re-arrange pieces to modify the landscape. The dioramas stimulate questions about our relationship with nature, its importance to the individual and collective well-being, and the existential value we have as human beings in connection to our environment.

Catalina Viejo Lopez de Roda writes, “When I create my images, I rely on the beauty, poetics, and sensuality of nature as it allows me to counteract the uneasy feelings I experience concerning my existential questions. There is always a moment of tension in my images, which fluctuates between pleasure and pain, power and vulnerability, life and death. The woman in my works embraces these dichotomies, the possible danger, the fear, the futility. She is aware that she is a part of the seasons of life; birth, change, decay, regeneration. The female figures in these drawings inspire how I would like to live my life. Stripped of material possessions, social relationships, and facial recognition, these women show us the value of being human and remind us that our natural environment is inextricably weaved into the fabric of our existence.”

Self Care will be at HallSpace until January 29. More of Catalina’s work can be found at her website or on Instagram @catalinaviejo