America Sin Fronteras

Raised by a conservative Catholic family in Chile, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra experienced the turmoil of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973–1990) until she left to study and live in Germany. Using a combination of drawing techniques, in her work she explores the traditions, rituals, and myths of the Americas to deal with trauma and dreams, violence, death, and redemption. Her art speaks from syncretic, yet deeply spiritual place informed by a repertoire of motifs that includes archaic archetypes, folk figures, and Indigenous iconographies.

The large-scale drawing America Sin Fronteras (America Without Borders) is composed of four folios presenting a double depiction of Pachamama, or Mother Earth. The body of a prone woman floats in the middle of the composition. Her chest, legs, and stomach are transformed into a plain where mountain peaks, volcanos, and hills emerge, as if her entire body morphed into a landscape. This mother figure of the earth gives birth to spirits rising from the mountains or from the maternal womb. Her head blends with the head of a similar feminine figure, placed vertically on the page, her body also becoming land. The title America Sin Fronteras appears at the center of the drawing, addressing the resemblances and divisions between different neighboring peoples in the Americas. America Sin Fronteras speaks of mythologies, sex ecologies, and transhumanism, evoking a porous and borderless territory.

(Text written by TBA21 and used as short text in the booklet of the exhibition "Remedios", C3A, Córdoba, 2023)