COMMENTS of VIRGINIA AYRESS MORENO About her work:

I am Latin American women and artist, I am part of the history of my continent and my country, Chile. I grew with my family values such as solidarity, respect for humanity, freedom of expression of religion and justice, which are the basis for my identity credentials.

I come from the eternal southern Andes, I grew up loving the warm colors of the Caribbean and the ancestral sounds of its drums. My European experience enriched me and my art, strengthened it, making me aware of my actions coming to appreciate the unique aspects that are present in  the different cultures  that  I have got to know and have left their impact on me. 

As an artist I am not indifferent to the situations facing society.
My artistic work in New York city reflects the community where I live. Thousands of women and children who face daily domestic violence are exposed to danger, in this environment finding alternatives to an aesthetic problem becomes a challenge. I use large walls of the city to make murals of social interests in which the large dimension allows transient public an opportunity to reflect on the theme and find their own relationship with it. Murals are a tool that allow me to express my social views.

In creating, I bring into being my personal experiences, my thoughts, joys, fears, successes and failures. My work is present in the oneiric, anthropomorphic images, in the animal-men-women unity , the return to the land we belong to, the symbols of religiosity and syncretism, which are the two areas that I address ancestral dreams: the Caribbean and the Andes. 

More importantly for me, is not to oppose limits to my expressional capacity. Trying to take advantage of the possibilities that exist at the time of creating and pick up the opportunities presented to me to recreate reality and enrich my perception of the world. This idea has become a challenge in this way, I am going through various alternatives which are enabling me to different aesthetic problems.

 Nature allows me to work with different materials such as iron, sand, cardboard, cloth, cement, etc.   these of organic wood engravings and woodcuts to recreate ancestral topics,  clay to create works that speak of diversity of marine life, mannequins to represent three-dimensional human forms that show women as life givers. Creating new forms by mixing traditional and experimental materials.
My need to express the relationship between nature, creativity and ourselves, aims to protect the power of human creativity through images, and not its destruction or oppression.

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