Born in Bogotá in 1999, Alejandra Álvarez is a Colombian artist and poet who is proud of her Andean origins and considers herself a daughter of the mountains.
For the artist, creation is an act of reclaiming her heart, mind, and body as both an individual and collective territory. Using art as a means of self-discovery, Álvarez explores universal themes connected to the lives of migrants, delving into the multiplicity of identity. Her practice moves fluidly across painting, writing, drawing, installation, and performance. Her work is a reflection of her life, lived far from her family and homeland.
At the epicenter of her artistic practice is color, along with the importance and significance it holds—not only for the artist personally, but also for the world. For Álvarez, using color is a way of casting a spell: filtering the outside world, only to release it back transformed.
As she adapted to life in Europe, the artist came to realize that Europe would never adapt to her, placing her identity as a Colombian woman at the core of her artistic practice. Through her work, she confronts her wounds with sensitivity, celebrating the resilience and beauty of her land and culture while exploring the process of healing. Her art is not only a record of her personal journey but also a mirror for those seeking to understand the complexities of the migrant experience.
Graduating Cum Laude from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze in 2021, the artist has since garnered international acclaim for artistic contributions. Notable exhibitions include "Re-Blossom" (2021) and "Incontri Creativi" (2022) in Florence, as well as "Miradas Latinoamericanas" (2023) in Paris. The artist's impact also extends to the realm of performance art, with participation in prominent events such as "Ridare l'Acqua al Popolo" (2021) in Florence and "Heart of the Underground" (2023) in Paris. In 2023, the artist unveiled a first solo exhibition, "Ainsi Je Résiste," in Paris. Recently, the artist further expanded global presence by presenting an inaugural solo exhibition in Asia, titled "FLOWER POWER," following the completion of a residency with Ketemu Project in Bali.
In Paris, Álvarez established a weekly poetry circle, "The Unicorn", at Mundolingua - The museum of languages, demonstrating her commitment to nurturing the international artistic community and exploring the intersections between the visual arts and poetry in her work. Alejandra currently lives and works in Paris, where she has her studio.
The most striking element about Alejandra Alvarez’s painting is the fundamental place of nature in the space of the canvas. Embracing, constant, superior, and magnified, it almost fully captures the attention. Sometimes treated with precision, it is more often represented in a moving harmony of flat tints and shades. Between the trees and leaves, is a nude self-portrait of the artist. Nudity is crucial in these portraits, enhancing the body as naked in the middle of the jungle is an ode to the osmosis between man and nature. Nudity is the trueness, transparency, and vulnerability of the soul. The treatment of the body within the scenery shows that for the artist, the main character isn’t the figure nor the jungle, it’s a whole. Everything acts and melts together in unity.
The artist tries to reconnect her soul with her body through the very essence of everything: Mother Earth. This is a personal quest, but more than anything, a will to find spirituality and greatness in a modern society that no longer prioritizes the living world. Nature plays a large part in the artist's heart as she grew up near it. Painting is a way of reconnecting with her origins and creating a sensitive, comforting, colorful, and bright world to escape the darkness of her mind.
In her most recent drawings, the artist shows new technicity in the graphic rendering of certain themes and her experiments in vivid and complementary colors. Symbolism plays a greater part in her creative process as we see the emerging saturated oniric scenes of spiritual beings. The birds and angel, often associated with biblical iconography, are here fully transformed into a sensorial and serene experience of spirituality, highlighting the invisible connections between all things: the earth, the sky, the unknown, the body, and the soul.
Eléonore Scarvelis, Art researcher