Catalina Fuentes Araya is a visual artist based in Gothenburg. Fuentes Araya works with a variety of mediums and techniques, and is currently focusing on spatial and sculptural work. She makes, builds and paints on objects formed out of mainly wood and cartoneria. With the surrealist and partly absurd expressions of her work, she formulates fragments of memories and stories to create new contexts and fictional realities. Through painting, sculpture and spatial installations she explores the need of connection through storytelling in our specific time and place. How a fictional space has the potential to act as a stage for our need of, and longing for, intelligibility. Themes such as politics, communion, life-death continuum, kinship and queerness are common subjects in her art. Her upbringing as a child of political refugees, her own queerness and a firm belief in art as international language, have largely inspired said themes.
Fuentes Araya has an educational background in art and woodwork/carpentry from Stockholm and Småland including studies at Norra Konstskolan 2010-2011, Nyckelviksskolan 2015, Gerlesborgskolan 2016-2017, and S:t Sigfrids folkhögskola 2018-2019. Her previous work and other practices range from visual art such as scenography and scenic design, to bodily performances and cross-genre projects such as “Satans Trilogi” (Stockholm 2015-2017).
About the work: Fuentes Araya has a history of implementing interactivity as an aspect, or even fundamental purpose, of her body of art. The desire to playfully evoke impulses of wanting to explore, and the wish to practice art as a verb rather than as a noun, derive from the longing to make art accessible and to push or even break traditional boundaries that separates art from play, and artist from spectator. She has an upbringing in a suburb of Stockholm where immigrants and working class are the majority of the inhabitants. These are social groups who usually are neglected in the general art world, both as artists and spectators. This is largely the source of her determination to challenge said boundaries.
In 2019 Fuentes Araya moved to Gothenburg. The pandemic meant a halt in entering the art scene in the new city and a halt in practising her art as she had done before. This, almost forced, stagnation inevitably resulted in introspective processes and self exploration. These new directions of her work still encourage play and curiosity but lean on, and speak heavily from, the artists personal narratives.
work in the show
“Untitled” (work in progress) (2023)
- mixed materials on wood
- dimensions: (70 x 85 x 15 cm)
- venue: GALLERI MONITOR
contact
Instagram: araya.del.rio
exhibition.school 