Maria de los Angeles Salinas Barreda

My paintings and sculptures are a reaction to the normalization of situations and

conducts in Mexican and American society: whether it is machismo, corruption, racism,
gender violence, hate, or destruction. My work is a graphic expression of the defense
mechanisms the psyche develops to manage these normalized situations. This
circumstances are mainly expressed in my artwork using Magical Realism.

Magical Realism developed from the exchange of ideas from European Surrealism and
Latin American ideology as a method where characters transform their reality with the
introduction of fantastical elements to cope with crude and raw situations. Initially it was
cultivated by writers, and later, by visual artists. My approach to this style has drawn my
work to a poetic mixture of text, painted images, newspaper clippings and found objects.
The subject matter are female figures, body parts like internal organs, nature elements
like mountains, clouds, bodies of water, birds, insects and flowers, and these
metaphorical elements are repeated throughout my work. Whether the female figure is
present or not, her psyche drives my work allowing the viewer to experience women’s
feelings, worries and happiness. The audience is introduced to the female mind through
narratives about women interacting with their own fabrication of the world and the
events that transform them.

My work, as a Mexican artist, is largely autobiographical. The influence of Mexican

Surrealism as a movement is still very pervasive today. In addition, “machismo” the
common male stereotype in which women are viewed as subservient of men, is a part
of Mexican daily life. Furthermore, the constant threat by drug cartels that control most
of the country, poverty and a very corrupt government are commonplace in Mexico. Five
years ago I moved to the U.S., and the cultural shock was unexpected. In my
experience, most Americans ignore disadvantaged people. Some Americans repress
Non-European differences in their own citizens, unless you happen to be Anglo in
appearance, reflected in our current immigration policies.

Both my life in Mexico and the U.S. has opened my eyes and steered my work to
scrutinize social constructions and desired behaviors. I create spaces of deceiving
situations, that at first sight might seem just as desirable images but are witnesses to
the internal turmoil created by the conflict of the confrontation between social
expectations and individual convictions.

I intend for my work to help change the constructed parameters through which society
defines women and to approach the themes of normalization from a female and
maternal point of view, a stand that proposes a different perspective where the solution
is within the nurturing and creative power of the female.