Abstract Impressions
Developed during the early 1990s, the series Abstract Impressions marks an initial exploration of the body, sexuality, and identity through an organic, abstract visual language. My research draws on the forms, cycles, and reproductive processes of flowers and plants, establishing parallels with the female body and the vital processes of gestation, transformation, and growth.
Plant forms become symbolic vehicles for exploring sexuality and embodied experience without relying on direct figurative representation. Nature serves as a field of correspondence between the physical, emotional, and vital, connecting the exploration of femininity with a broader reflection on the relationship between human beings and the natural world.
Art historian and curator Ana Rosa Valdez has identified this dimension in my early work, highlighting the search for identity through bodily experience and a connection with nature and the universe. Referring specifically to works produced around 1991, Valdez notes the presence of “flowers and plant forms alluding to the female body and sexuality, as well as sexual reproduction and the origins of life” (Valdez, 2023).
Works such as Bird Woman, Open Woman, Fertilization, and Between Water and Fire belong to this period of experimentation, in which abstraction and expressionism became tools for translating intimate experiences into a visual language.
In retrospect, Abstract Impressions represents an early stage in an artistic inquiry that continues to evolve throughout my practice: the relationship between body, nature, memory, identity, and territory, with travel as a recurring thread connecting these explorations.
Reference: Ana Rosa Valdez, “Tearing Open a Contemporary Horizon,” Paralaje, 2023, section: “Diana Valarezo: I Am Ecuador.”
