Sandra Vásquez
de la Horra
The Awake
Volcanoes
04/10—
07/28/25

Malba presents the first solo exhibition in Argentina of Chilean artist Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, renowned for her recent participation in the Venice Biennale and for receiving the prestigious Käthe Kollwitz Prize in 2023. Curated by Raphael Fonseca, a curator of Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art at the Denver Art Museum, the exhibition includes paintings, drawings, and prints by this artist based in Berlin, Germany.

In her work, Vásquez de la Horra explores the concepts of fantasy, desire, fear, and pleasure to delve into the relationships between the human body and the world around it. Drawing, which she considers a flexible and dynamic medium, is a key aspect of her practice.

Vásquez de la Horra was born in 1967 in Viña del Mar, Chile, where she grew up during Augusto Pinochet’s seventeen-year dictatorship, and she left her country in the nineties to study in Germany. Her drawings often include symbols from different cultures, and her female figures play contrasting roles in narratives that deal with freedom, spirituality, and nature. Her works depict female bodies that merge with surrealist landscapes in a poetic experimentation that weaves the absurd with the affirmation of affection and pleasure.

“Silhouettes of human bodies, mountains, volcanoes, and words appear throughout Sandra Vásquez de la Horra’s work, which delves into shared and untold stories of trauma, desire, fantasies, and taboos,” Fonseca says. “The artist was born in Chile and has lived in Germany for several decades, where she has created her own artistic language, imbued with Latin American history and European artistic traditions. With a career that spans nearly forty years, she works every day and continues to surprise those who have followed her for decades, as well as those who have only recently discovered her practice.”

The exhibition is divided into four sections: Late un fuego allí dentro [There’s a fire inside], which explores the relationship between body and landscape; Botánica de la evolución [Botanics of the evolution], which thoroughly examines the cycles of life; Los pensamientos [The thoughts], which asks how images dialogue with writing, and Aguas profundas [Deep waters], which offers a coexistence between humans, spirituality, and our surroundings.

Los volcanes despiertos features works spanning her four-decade career, in which Vásquez de la Horra explores mythologies, fantastical and hybrid plants, diverse geographies, and texts written in Spanish, English, Italian, Latin, and German, which expand the possibilities of meaning behind each piece.

“Her work invites us to expose the mysteries and depths of our shared experiences, as Vásquez de la Horra continues to expand the territory she artistically explores, combining history, memory, dreams, and imagination,” Fonseca says.

Organized by the Denver Art Museum.
Curator: Raphael Fonseca.