Sandra Vásquez de la Horra is a Chilean artist whose practice explores themes of mortality, rebirth, sexuality, myth, and ritual, often confronting the histories of violence and subjugation experienced by people of African descent in Latin America. Her works frequently depict female bodies merging with surreal, symbolic landscapes, creating spaces where the visible and invisible coexist. Raised during Pinochet’s seventeen-year military regime, Vásquez de la Horra later moved to Germany in the 1990s to continue her studies. This experience shaped her interest in memory, spirituality, and the psychological dimensions of personal and collective histories.

Facing one another, these two works visualize the artist’s understanding of spirituality as a living, shared act—a bridge between the visible and invisible, between those who are here and those who came before. Both pieces draw on the meanings of prayer and the practice of “giving light” to one’s ancestors as a way of entering into dialogue with guardian spirits. Vásquez de la Horra seals her works in wax, a process that lends them an aura and produces “particles” that become part of an alchemical transformation of both surface and color. The figures themselves seem to pulse outward, their layered hues suggesting inner radiance, knowledge, and ancestral presence. Divided into quadrants by the sheets of paper, each body is slightly disrupted—an interruption that echoes the threshold between realms, hinting at the continual movement between material and immaterial worlds.