2023
Driven by an unconscious search for the familiar and a sense of belonging through contemplative practices in nature, I have situated myself as an intimate and playful neighbor of the forest and the river next-door for the past few years. The Chattahoochee River in Roswell, Ga, and sporadic visits to Papallacta, Ecuador -a biodiverse cloud forest region in my hometown- have therefore informed my body of work since 2020. I have been observant of nature ́s mechanisms and transitions, its resilience and pace, the speed and the quietness, the flourishing of orderly and diverse phenological patterns…What remains within never-ending mutation cycles? What persists? These abstract mixed media works become a biomorphic multi-perspective assemblage of sensorial and affective information gathered from two specific river sites, those who have awakened intuitive and old childlike practices, as well as quotidian pursuits of home traces in nature ́s drifts.
2021-2022
My work explores ideas revolving around the human condition and existential concerns through different art-making processes that include drawing, painting, installation, and objects. From the standpoint of my own perception and approach to my surroundings and motivated by the urge to connect with others and existence, to investigate the idea of balance, to relate to human struggles from an individual and collective perspective, my artistic practice is nurtured by observation and assimilation of the world around me (natural and urban ecosystems). My artistic practice and bodies of work mutate and evolve according to variables of time, place, and personal + global circumstances manifesting into non-objective, pattern based mixed media works. Some of the concepts examined are longing, alienation, transformation, resilience, decay, fecundity, rebirth, adaptability, fragility, impermanence, relentlessness.
2020
My work is an exploration of analogies between the human condition and nature. Individual and collective dynamics affected by inner mechanisms and ecosystemic agents. My making process and artistic practice seek to examine ideas of resilience, transformation, rebirth, tension, balance, transition, uncertainty, impermanence. The imagery and mark making vocabulary in my mixed media drawings and paintings come from the recollection of visual information took in from holistic immersions in natural sites in Atlanta, Ga like the Chattahoochee river area and Stone Mountain.
2018 – 2019
My work examines the relation between urban development and the human condition. I am interested in analyzing and questioning the impact of a booming urban ecosystem over its inhabitants and their interactions within those transforming surroundings. Through a multidisciplinary approach that combines video installation, painting, drawing, and printmaking I intend to tackle societal challenges and hurdles such as the fragmentation of communities, sterilization of areas of the city, and homogenization of populations. The formal language and color palette of the work is drawn from the recognition and observation of visual information and marking systems in the utility sector and construction industry, as well as from an intimate and more personal processes and interactions with simple living organisms such as kidney bean sprouts that I grow in cotton balls.
CARLA.CONTRERAS.ART 