Born in Bath (UK) in 1996 and of Colombian nationality, Carlota Sandoval Lizarralde graduated from ENSA Villa Arson (Nice) in 2021. She lives and works in Paris.
Carlota Sandoval Lizarralde's practice is interstitial. The artist moves between assembling collected objects, drawing with oil pastels and performance art in an attempt to narrate the unspeakable experience of migration. Always starting from the most intimate to express a situated discourse, that of a Colombian woman settled in France by choice, her work reflects a perpetually transitory state: motifs intermingle, languages interfere, memories of adolescence intrude on collective narratives. The artist's work is based on what is missing: the sense of absence of loved ones, the lack of consideration for foreigners in the West, the annihilation of indigenous populations by colonial powers. In this way, the hybridity of her identities is echoed in her contradictory, torn, fragmented and chaotic forms. From these voids, she also creates saturated environments, notably landscapes teeming with bright colours, reappropriating idyllic representations of the 'new world' (Constelaciones, 2023). The childlike kitsch of his productions, a direct descendant of the colourful aesthetic of the 2000s, seems, through the reminiscences of a joyful childhood, to be a path towards resilience.
Resolutely diasporic and feminist, Carlota Sandoval Lizarralde's works are conceived as spaces of refuge. This shift from a hostile environment to a protected zone, from public to domestic space, is particularly palpable in her interest in thresholds. There is a door that seems to levitate, decorated with idols and rosaries (La non-place, 2023). There is a beam to cross, from which hangs a multitude of objects patiently found or brought back by his Colombian entourage with protective functions (Ofrendas, 2023). Through a syncretism between Latin American Catholic traditions, ancestral spiritualities and her own imagination, the artist proposes trans-generational dialogues to think about shared healing.
Virginia Quadjovie