NEW YORK, NY.- P·P·O·W announced representation of Mexican American artist Astrid Terrazas (b. 1996). Taking the form of mixed media painting and illustrated ceramic vessels, Terrazas’ symbolic work re-writes worlds. With unflinching vulnerability, Terrazas conveys stories that push personal and communal trauma towards tangible healing.

Working in an illustrative, highly detailed style, Terrazas’ multimedia paintings resemble a visual dream diary full of transient figures, archaic symbols, and illogical narratives. Merging dreamscapes, Mexican ancestral folklore, lived experiences, and unearthly transfigurations, Terrazas’ personal range of recurring motifs function as artifacts of protection and evoke universal metaphors of transformation. Symbols such as snakes, stairs, braids, and windows speak to themes of metamorphosis and passage. Often divided into distinct planes, Terrazas’ compositions signify altering worlds or states of consciousness where time is fluid. For Terrazas, painting is “a process of finding and burying” and she describes her work as akin to incanting: a way to cast spells and weave new healing narratives to transmute histories.

Since its inception, P·P·O·W has maintained a programmatic dedication to exhibiting socially conscious figurative art. Influenced by surrealist artists such as Remedios Varo, folk artists such as Minnie Evans, and figurative painters such as Martin Wong, Terrazas’ seamless blend of the personal and political furthers that commitment. P·P·O·W will feature Terrazas' work at Zsonamaco in February, with her first solo exhibition in New York planned to open at the gallery in 2022.

Terrazas (b. 1996) received her BFA in Illustration from Pratt Institute in 2018. She has exhibited work at P·P·O·W, New York, NY; Y2K Group, New York, NY; Andrea Festa Fine Art, Rome, Italy; Real Pain, New York, NY; Marinaro, New York, NY; Fort Makers, New York, NY; Gern en Regalia, New York, NY; Front Gallery, Houston, TX; and 98 Orchard St, New York, NY; among others. Her work has recently been featured in articles in Art Maze Mag, The Art Newspaper, and The Brooklyn Rail and will be included in the forthcoming exhibition 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone at the Aldrich Contemporary Museum of Art opening June 2022.