Ivana de Vivanco

Ivana de Vivanco makes paintings, sculptures and installations that turn the picture into a stage. Using classical painterly techniques, she assembles theatrical scenes, often in domestic interiors, with dramatic lighting and isolated, masked or nude characters who seem to keep a secret, at once vulnerable and performing. Her paintings draw on art history, from Goya and Bacon to religious iconography, Renaissance drama, Baroque theatre and classical antiquity, and on decolonial themes from Latin American and Andean history, such as the iconography of the apostle Santiago. Bright, saturated colour lowers the viewer's guard before the darker subject matter becomes clear. In sculptural works of coloured plaster, concrete and resin, de Vivanco carries motifs from the canvas into physical space, and the classical column has become a foundation of her three-dimensional work.