Laura Restrepo, Roxanne Shanté (2020)
We are condemned to be forgotten.
Memories fade, faces erode, time elapses and our existence quickly evaporates. The fascination and anguish born from this truth have been inspiring Laura’s work since 2015. Her charcoal on paper as well as her digital portraits attempt to capture the features of diverse individuals in a particular fragment of time. Restrepo refers to the charcoal as a “dark dust” and paradoxically aims to prolong the “existence” or “presence of those individuals, at least, on the surface of the paper.
By contemplating Restrepo’s artwork, you are confronted to a spectrum of fears, traumas, denials, and constant questioning. However, even if death is a certainty, through her artworks she celebrates life, memories and the immeasurable beauty of what is ephemeral.
Graduated with honors of Visual Arts from York University (Summa Cum Laude 2015, Toronto), Restrepo has always embraced the technical qualities of realism and traditional portraiture without limiting her own vision. As absent background as well as the strong presence of the line, are some of her dominant artistic elements.