In tracing the order of things: an interview with visual artist Vanessa Donoso López

Authors

Donoso Lopez, Vanessa
Cashell, Fiona

Issue Date

2018

Degree

Publisher

SAHKartell

Rights

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Abstract

Catalonian artist Vanessa Donoso López has been living and working in Dublin for much of her professional career. She exhibits widely, with successful solo shows this year in Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin, and Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast. Her practice is interdisciplinary and developed within a dialogical framework; exploring a variety of media and mechanisms as she moves from project to project, working with ceramics and paper, site-specific installation, sculpture, electronics and low-tech wearable technology. Conceptually López attempts to negotiate the tension between cross-cultural identities and narratives, their instabilities and complexities, and their potential for the loss of identity and language. Her work is deeply connected to something that connects within us all; highlighting the movement of time as viewed through the lens of the metaphysical self—manifested, changed, reinvented or forgotten. Her creative approach showcases a sensitive awareness for the experiences she encounters as both migrant and researcher: one who moves between the familiar and the unknown, between landscape and history, and between the varying points of origin that shape and define us.