LET'S SING

I think about being through what makes us present: the body, the voice, the gaze, and the awareness of existing. In Let's Sing, the voice acquires meaning precisely through its opposite: imposed silence.

The work stems from a reality that affects me, though it does not belong to me. That distance is fundamental. I do not seek to represent an experience as my own or take the place of other women. I choose to enter the picture and position myself alongside them. Painting thus becomes a form of closeness and, at the same time, an acknowledgment of a limit.

On the left, I appear in a self-portrait. The gaze is direct, serious, restrained; there is anger, but it does not become a gesture. This is the position from which I observe and become aware of what separates me from the other figures. In the center, that restraint breaks: the mouth opens and song erupts physically through the body. The hands accompany this expansion, turning the voice into gesture, presence, and affirmation. The third figure introduces another state: the smile shifts the initial tension and opens the composition to the possibility of hope.

Color shapes this journey without turning it into a linear narrative. Yellows, ochres, and oranges cross the faces and reach the imagined tiles in the background, carrying the same intensity among the three figures. Against the geometry and repetition of the ornament, the bodies introduce individuality, emotion, and movement.

There is a deliberate tension between the beauty of the image and what gives rise to it. The fabrics, lace, ornament, and richness of color do not neutralize the conflict; they contain it. The voice appears where its absence becomes most perceptible.

Painting does not seek to resolve the distance between an experience of one’s own and someone else’s. Nor does it turn empathy into identification. It allows me to remain in that uncomfortable space: to draw near without appropriating, to look at what I cannot fully understand, and to accept the responsibility of not looking away.

Painting does not erase that distance; it makes it possible to inhabit it without looking away.