Sofía Reynal

Confronted with the condition of the image today, radically desacralized in its omnipresence and hyper-mediation, how can I, as an artist, come back to the image in faith? What can the form of this faith be? Can faith be the act of becoming of a form? Is the act of becoming of a form revelation? Is revelation a form of representation? Is representation a form of presence? How can an image hold a presence? Might this presence enact a material conversation between the image and itself? May that conversation be a form of touch? Can an image touch? What lives inside that touch? Is that which lives inside that touch representation? Or is it a form of care?

Guided by these questions that haunt and inform my practice, I seek to open a trans-temporal conversation that dives into the history of religious art and mysticism—and in particular its representation of women and motherhood—to resurface modes of imaging that might help us envision a new foundation for our life with images in the present. One that may undo the ocularcentric path of western tradition that made of the image a representation of an absence, and instead speak to our relationship with images in touch, presence and belief. One that might reclaim, in the midst of a regime that monetizes our gaze, attention as a form of devotion and care.