MUNICH.- “Soy Energía” is the first European survey of Chilean artist Sandra Vásquez de la Horra (b. 1967, Viña del Mar, Chile) and presents the transnational and Indigenous perspectives of her multidisciplinary artistic practice. Her oeuvre, which consists primarily of drawings and paintings as well as films and performances, encompasses complex events, stories, rituals, and beliefs rooted in both her upbringing in Chile and her many years living in Germany, opening up new perspectives.

Jana Baumann, Senior Curator: “The multi-perspective nature of the work invites an encounter with the artist’s spiritual worlds, which reconcile humans and nature, and the exhibition honours her commitment to self-determination, women’s rights and human rights.”

The exhibition is dedicated to Vásquez de la Horra’s experimental practice, with a particular focus on her spatial, energetic, and global thinking. Her experiences of persecution, oppression, and migration play an essential role in this. The artist has developed her own exhibition practice, which is derived from working with organic materials and extends scenographic approaches into the space, conveying poignant existential experiences.

Vásquez de la Horra’s early series of works were created during the Pinochet regime in Chile in the 1980s and 1990s, during which the artist explored the body and its worldly embeddedness through signs, fragments, and language. Drawings of fabulous hybrid creatures combining human, animal, and plant features allude to the incompatibility of history and morality. The artist presents these works, which are soaked in beeswax – a technique she has been using since 1997 – in experimental hangings to create multilayered constellations. During her early years in Europe, Vásquez de la Horra created video performances and films that are being exhibited for the first time. In these works, she addresses significant themes and events such as loneliness, separation and racism. This retrospective exhibition brings together the historical dimension of her work and its contemporary development, honouring Sandra Vásquez de la Horra’s transdisciplinary oeuvre spanning four decades.

Andrea Lissoni, Artistic Director: “The exhibition reflects our transdisciplinary, transnational approach to programming – an approach that interweaves different yet coordinated practices and engages with history in order to simultaneously open up new ways of inhabiting the present.”

With “Soy Energía,” Haus der Kunst continues its vision in re-examining art-historical canons and giving space to voices that have long been marginalised. Vásquez de la Horra’s retrospective echoes the new readings of art history in the group exhibition “For Children. Art Stories since 1968” and the changing perceptions on public monuments explored in “Cyprien Gaillard. Wassermusik”. Her intimate yet expansive drawings reflect the way Ei Arakawa-Nash transforms signs and gestures into shared languages – by incorporating public space and transforming it into a place where images, signs, and movements become encounters and shared gestures.

Curated by Jana Baumann with Marlene Mützel.