Patricia Henríquez (Mexico, CDMX, 1967) is a visual multidisciplinary artist. Her experimental animated short films have been screened at festivals, museums and cultural institutions at America, Europe and Asia.
Henríquez has received several national and international grants, prizes, awards and distinctions in experimental short films animation, painting and drawing. She is a member of Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte 2019. Henríquez has exhibited individually in museums and cultural institutions in Mexico and cultural institutions in Spain, China and the USA.
She has participated in over 90 collective exhibitions and biennial in museums in Mexico, Dominican Republic and in cultural institutions in Italy China, Germany, Spain, Slovakia, USA, Bolivia and Bulgaria and Puerto Rico and is an active member of one of the most important national collections “Pago en Especie” of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit since 2002.
Self-taught or art school?
I studied painting at “la Esmeralda”, (inba), and drawing workshops at enap (unam), 1988-1992.
If you could own one work of art, what would it be?
It is very difficult for me to choose just one work of art. But if I try to remember there are works of art that changed my perception of art.
I was a teenager when I saw for the first time the slaves of Michelangelo in Florence and the world changed for me.
How would you describe your style?
My work is balanced between instinct and idea, drawing and figurative painting and abstract art, on the border of classic and contemporary art. I’m obsessed with darkness and light, the immediate and the far away, with what I can touch or what I can only perceive, a world that begins and ends all the time.
Can you tell us about your artistic process?
Drawing is my main tool, in the way of registration or anatomy of the different forms or phenomena of natural life. For me, the drawing is a process that does not an end in itself, as well as a wonderful interdisciplinary tool of thinking.
The expanded drawing playing different ways of expression and other formats, whether books of artists sketches (croquis), intervened in situ, with random sound in architectural space.
Is narrative important within your work?
In my work, the narrative is subtle, but in some sense, is more like a perception of sensations.
Who are your favourite artists, and why?
For me it is impossible to have one favourite – Francisco Goya, Van Gogh, J.M.W.Turner, Kate Kollwitz, William Kentridge, Miquel Barcelo, Rothko, Motherwell, Jose Clemente Orozco, they are so strong and significant.
What or who inspires your art?
The main topic of my work is nature, could be the animal or vegetable world, a strong world and at the same time so vulnerable, a microcosm in a macrocosm.
Where’s your studio, and what’s it like?
I have a little studio at my home, but my true studio is the life that surrounds me outside.
Do you have any studio rituals?
Music as the direct way to emotions, to enter into the mood, and energy is created that helps to share sensations.
Drink coffee, chocolate or tea to incite my instinct.
A quick bath to activate the body and mind.
I smell something that I like – to activate the senses; it takes you directly to the brain and the memory.
What are you working on currently?
I’m working currently on drawing like a game – different ways of expression and other formats, an artists book (reading sketches or croquis), The experimental animation – images with aleatory sound and move), the ephemeral artistic intervention in situ with aleatory sound – drawings that expand and invade the architectural space.
