ELENA MANERO: PROJECTIONS OF THE UNGRASPABLE MEMORY
In her work, using traditional techniques such as oil painting, she explores contemporary imaginaries with a reflective approach to the relationship between memory, the body, image, and identity.
Proyecciones de la memoria inaprensible (Projections of the Ungraspable Memory) is the latest exhibition by painter Elena Manero (Mexico City, 1990), bringing together a selection of works that challenge the boundaries between figurative painting, photography, and reflections on individual and collective memory. The exhibition recovers and works with a photographic archive of family origin, developing a highly personal protocol of color application that imbues her figurative discourse with a post-portrait, post-photographic, and post-pictorial identity.
"The artist has mobilized her visual work through the sometimes smooth, sometimes tense convergence of three creative domains: the field of contemporary figurative painting, the timeless genre of portraiture, and, from that perspective, the current dialogue between the plastic discipline of painting and the visual medium of photography," assured curator Eric Castillo.
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Elena Manero. Persona, 2024. Óleo sobre lino, 120 × 80 cm. Cortesía de Aldama Fine Art
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Elena Manero. Introyección, 2024. Óleo sobre lino, 40 × 50 cm. Cortesía de Aldama Fine Art
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Elena Manero. Rizoma I, 2024. Óleo sobre lino, 70 × 50 cm. Cortesía de Aldama Fine Art
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Elena Manero. Rizoma II, 2024. Óleo sobre lino, 50 × 60 cm. Cortesía de Aldama Fine Art
Manero, who has developed her career between Mexico and the United States, projects images from family archives onto contemporary female models, creating an interplay between past and present. This technique—combining photographic archives with a meticulous process of color application on oil and linen—results in works that evoke the fragility of memories and the impossibility of fully grasping the image of the past.
“This project reflects on images and their relationship with the body and memory. It emerged as I revisited my inherited family photo albums and archives, which prompted me to consider how we record, document, and share our memories as vessels of meaning, both in their physical and elusive nature.
In these paintings, I explore new possibilities of figuration, where the superimposition of images evokes a psychological expression of the individual, revealing multiple facets and layers of their essence. Rather than seeking a precise reflection of forms, I aim to enable a different, intersubjective, and transpersonal gaze," stated the artist.
Manero, who studied at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the New York Academy of Art, has exhibited internationally and received multiple awards in contemporary art biennials and competitions.
Projections of the Ungraspable Memory will be on view until March 28, 2025, at Aldama Fine Arts, Palacio de Versalles 100 L-B, Lomas Reforma, Mexico City (Mexico).
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