Retratos de Papel (Paper Portraits) emerges from encounters with people in my immediate surroundings. Elderly people like my grandmother, my grandfather, a friend, a neighbour. I am interested in the singularity of each face, in what a person reveals and what remains inaccessible. The depth of a face, or its opacity, depends to a great extent on the gaze we cast upon it. Drawings, photographs, notes or recordings preserve fragments of these encounters. I allow this material to settle before returning to it. Each portrait develops through a gradual process, shaped by observation, familiarity and memory, as well as by the distance that time introduces.

The face becomes a territory in which the marks of lived experience find a material correspondence in paper. Working on a large scale intensifies this relationship: facial features take on an almost topographical dimension, while the folds, wrinkles and accidental formations of the paper become increasingly prominent. I manipulate and crease its surface, allowing the relief to participate in the construction of the likeness. Charcoal settles into its folds and edges, while light and cast shadows extend the drawing beyond the marks deposited on the paper. From a distance, the face emerges as a recognisable whole; up close, its features give way to the complexity of the surface. The image acquires a physical presence approaching bas-relief, shaped by intentional gesture, material accident and changing light.

In elderly faces, this relationship between matter and time takes on a particular intensity. Old age holds the traces of previous stages of life and, at the same time, a visible proximity to disappearance. I am interested in it as an accumulation of life: a surface where identity, memory and transformation come together.

This work, initially rooted in proximity and familiarity, gradually opened towards other encounters. Travel introduced distance, transience and cultural difference, while preserving the same enquiry into the face of another. Anónimos (Anonymous –Paper Portraits) would later emerge from this shift.

“Eternity is in love with the productions of time.”
—William Blake