In a similar vein to the automatic drawings of the surrealists, Rojas Osterling’s practice embodies streams of consciousness on paper, with her drawings acting as a space in which the artist allows herself to lose control and temporarily free herself from the demands of domestic life. This intuitive way of working is paired almost paradoxically with a sense of careful observation and seemingly mathematical technicality.
This controlled chaos parallels Rojas Osterling’s experience of balancing the demands of motherhood and the mundane chaos that brings, with the challenge of maintaining an artistic practice. The intricate interlacing of the webs, networks and grids that make up Rojas Osterling’s drawings come together to form compositions that straddle the border between disorder and control. Using architectural precision in conjunction with fluid free drawing, the works have an organic quality to them, as well as a rawness that echoes a mind in a chronic state of interruption, the mind of a mother. The very materials themselves become a receptacle of emotions, an antidote to anxiety, a space of thought, a place to scream, a private space and a daily ritual.
Macarena Rojas (b. 1985, Lima, Peru)
She studied Architecture at the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and subsequently transferred to the Communications Department, where she graduated in 2009. In 2012 she did the General Studies in Photography Program at the International Center of Photography in New York and in 2017 she received her Masters in Fine Arts at The Royal College of Art in London.
