Colossal · Creativity & design

Anna Ortiz Explores Mythic Borderlands in 'Shapeshifter' Exhibition

Artist Anna Ortiz uses the jaguar as a metaphor for navigating mythic borderlands, drawing on her Mexican-American heritage to depict remote landscapes.

Ortiz employs limited, vibrant color palettes, favoring subtle shifts in tone and saturation to paint jungle terrains in shades of blues, greens, and pinks. This approach emphasizes a fantastic, variable world that appears as a manifestation of myth.

Her new body of work, 'Shapeshifter,' delves into borderlands where time and space collapse. Recurring motifs like an explosive volcano, a double moon, and reflective pools suggest a realm where multiple realities coexist and change is constant.

Ortiz's art echoes feminist writer Gloria Anzaldúa's concepts of mixed heritage, the borderland, and the nagual (a shapeshifter in Mesoamerican folklore). Anzaldúa's writings describe identity as a changing cluster of components and a shape-shifting activity.

The exhibition 'Shapeshifter' is on view through October 31 at Chart Gallery in Tribeca.

AI-samenvatting op basis van de bron.