El mito del eterno retorno

In El mito del eterno retorno (The Myth of Eternal Return), one of Sandra Vásquez de la Horra’s works on paper dipped in wax, the artist creates a vision inspired by the historian Mircea Eliade. In The Myth of Eternal Return: Or, Cosmos and History written in 1949, Eliade discusses the religious behaviors in archaic societies and ways in which humans connect and negotiate with the cosmos and its rhythms, embracing a cyclical conception of time. In an order based on a clear separation between sacred and profane entities and spaces, myths represent the breakthroughs of the sacred, or the supernatural, into the world. Ceremonies and rituals that repeat events from a mythical beginning of time are ways in which societies symbolically reactualize their cosmogony. This necessity for archaic societies to regenerate themselves, cyclizing life as a continuous rebirth and return, invalidates the idea of a linear time. In the scenario that Vasquez de la Horra constructed, she delves into a symbolism that refers to cycles of birth and death, the celestial sphere, and once again the fusion among Mother and Earth, Gaia, or Pachamama.

Vásquez often seals her drawings with molten beeswax, a process that evokes a religious connotation and adds a layer of vulnerability to their materiality. In a new series of graphite, watercolor, and wax-on-paper works, she employs accordion folds to bring her figures into sculptural space. Her practice explores themes of mortality, rebirth, sexuality, myth, and ritual as well as examining the violence and subjugation experienced by people of African descent throughout Latin American history.

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