Ivonne Portillo

The Colombian plastic artist Ivonne Portillo reimagines the myths and landscapes of Latin America through abstract imagery and symbolic figures. Her original techniques combine oil, acrylic, watercolor, printmaking and collage. She uses these techniques to connect with her memory and Latinamerican roots through colors and symbols. Alongside her art studio based in Barcelona, Casa Jaguar Studio, she has created a body of work that combines visual art with experimental photography, poetry, film and animations.

Ivonne’s work celebrates the diversity of the peoples and landscapes of Latin America while emphasizing the vindication of the historical memory of indigenous peoples. Ivonne transforms the shapes of the earth and its textures into carved and engraved topographies that she then prints on paper or fabric, using oil engraving paint and collage with metallized paper. The woodcut prints a trace representative of a diverse landscape, much like the Latinamerican lands which shelter 60% of the planet’s biodiversity. These lands are a natural mosaic that shelter infinite forms of human and non-human life.

In these works the materials speak of the interdependent relationship between nature and society: burlap and paper, plant fiber materials used by peoples for millennia, represent the basic and essential. The metallic colors represent the mineral richness of the earth: precious metals that were transformed by the indigenous goldsmiths of these territories. Xylography integrates these two materials through impact, creating a unique imprint in each work and leaving a trace on the essence of the earth, just like people do when they inhabit a landscape.