Gabriela Sánchez

01 — Statement

Making the invisible visible

Making the invisible visible: this is what my work looks for. What holds a form up even when we can't see it, what breaks without a sound, what changes while it is still standing.

My work starts in the body. Before I paint, I breathe, I stay still, I feel my weight. Then the gesture becomes a line: I drag, press, stretch, repeat, stop. The line does not draw something. It is proof that I was there. It is presence.

Since Residencia Lagos (Mexico City, 2026) my work turns around one question: what happens when I stop covering my line and let it stay whole? For years, encaustic helped me veil, protect and correct. Today I want the opposite: to show what holds things up.

I work with ink, paper, acetate, wax and resin. Transparency lets us see the structure that keeps a form standing. Inside it live tensions that also belong to the body and to life: support and fracture, absence and balance.

The crack is central to my work. I don't see it as damage to hide, but as a map. It shows where the force went, where something gave way and how it kept going. So I don't try to repair. I try to unite: to let the broken and the whole live on the same surface.

My method is repetition. Repeating a gesture many times does not make it the same; each time it leaves a different mark, like each breath. This idea comes from my practice of Zen painting and Japanese calligraphy, where a gesture is never corrected. Memory comes in as a layer too: what I inherited, what I keep, what returns.

I trained in textile design, and I still think like someone who sews. The line is thread, the gesture is the needle, and the body is what joins. This is where Trazos comes from: a series of works on paper and acetate where a single line holds the whole space.

Each piece is a record of what breaks, what holds and what changes. Leaving the line in view, without covering it or asking forgiveness, is how I inhabit my line.