Todas las fotos de obras son cortesía de la artista
- Redacción spg
Inside the Surreal Worlds of Mexican Artist Astrid Terrazas
Astrid Terrazas draws inspiration from her family’s lineage of women healers, as well as from her own traumas and strengths, to create surreal worlds in her paintings.
On July 3, 2021, a new gallery opened in Mexico City. Located in the heart of Colonia Roma at 130 Campeche Street, it shares its name with the street and showcases contemporary art. Its inaugural exhibition, La Luz Proviene de Ahí (The Light Comes from Within), features new works by six Mexican artists.
Surreal Portraits by Mexican Artist Astrid Terrazas
The space is not very large—50 square meters—but it feels expansive. From the entrance, you can see the works of all the participating artists, and at the back, on the left side, hangs a very large canvas measuring two meters by one and a half. A braid of synthetic hair hangs from one side of the frame, and the acrylic-painted elements create a vacuum-like effect: it is impossible to look at this piece—made by Astrid Terrazas—without wanting to stay there for hours.
“This was the first large painting I made,” Astrid shares during a video call from New York, where she has lived for seven years—she is only 25 years old. Making it that size was her psychologist’s suggestion. “I had a lot of issues with my body image. I had eating disorders, which I worked through and are no longer a problem, but when I spoke with my therapist she said: what if you make paintings so large that you have to use your whole body, you have to really be there, present, as someone with skin, with everything,” the artist explains without hesitation, empowered by her story.
Stories Aimed at Emotional Impact
This is the first time Astrid Terrazas has exhibited in Mexico, but in her brief career she has already shown her work in many artistic spaces. At the same time that her piece hangs at Galería Campeche, she is also exhibiting another work in Rome, Italy. In New York, she has participated in multiple exhibitions, often organized by friends and classmates, but the first major show in which she truly felt like an artist was nearly a year ago at a Manhattan gallery called Gern en Regalia.
“After that, everything started happening really fast, because other curators and gallery people saw the work and started reaching out…,” Terrazas says. At just 25 years old, this artist is already making waves in the art world. This summer she will participate in another exhibition in New York, has collaborated with fashion designer Paloma Wool, and is scheduled to have her first solo exhibition in Mexico City next year.
The piece currently on view at Galería Campeche is titled Cantando himnos en el jardín atrás de Walgreens (Singing Hymns in the Garden Behind Walgreens). It contains many elements and symbols: the central image is the body of a woman covering her breasts, surrounded by talismans. On the other side, faces resembling moons or greasy pearls gaze at the woman. Branches sprout from stones. Astrid Terrazas is unmistakably a Mexican surrealist; one of her favorite artists, she says, is Remedios Varo.
Between Ciudad Juárez, Texas, and New York
Astrid Terrazas was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. She lived there until nearly eight years old, when her family moved to Dallas because her father, a journalist, did not feel safe working on that side of the border. She attended an arts-focused high school and later moved to New York to study at the Pratt Institute, graduating in 2018.
She grew up listening to her mother’s stories about life on a ranch in Nuevo León. “Her maternal family were healers, so she has so many stories about them and about the people who went to them,” says Terrazas. “Many of my pieces are stories my mom has told me.” She always found art to be the best way to express what was going on in her mind—whether through drawing, painting, or ceramics.
Healers, Psychology, and Visual Conversations
On her website, she states that she rewrites stories. “They are narratives that carry personal and communal traumas toward tangible healing. Terrazas uses recurring motifs as protective artifacts, meant to cast a spell of care over whoever encounters them.” She takes her own experiences—like the one depicted in the piece at Campeche—or her mother’s stories and retells them through symbols and figures. For example, braids, which appear in many of her works, represent her connection to her family, while bulls or large horned animals symbolize anxiety.
She uses these figures to imprint her feelings onto the canvas. “When the feeling I had in my chest is already in the painting, I don’t want to talk to that painting anymore. Maybe we’ll talk later, but not right now,” Terrazas explains—that is how she knows a piece is finished. Her paintings—and ceramics—are unrestrained bodily emotions with happy endings: they are the stories that need to be told in this world.
If you would like to learn more about Mexican surrealist Astrid Terrazas, visit her website or see the exhibition. La Luz Proviene de Ahí en Galería Campeche.
Website: https://www.chilango.com/cultura/mundos-surrealista-mexicana-astrid-terrazas/amp/
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