Mariel Lebrija: ACRYLIC ON canvas

MARIEL LEBRIJA: ARTIST BIO & STATEMENT

Mariel Lebrija, Mexico City, 1989, studied photography at The School of Visual Arts and did her master's degree at Photo Global, SVA, NYC. Her work ranges from photography, painting, sculpture, and installation based works. In 2017 she founded the artist’s space Chloro in CDMX. Her work has been shown in Zona Maco 2017, 2018, Art Palm Springs 2020, as well as throughout different gallery shows in Mexico and the US. She is currently based in Mexico City.

Mariel Lebrija's paintings are based on and inspired by a series of slides from her family archive taken by her grandfather during the 50's, 60's and 70’s, during his travels all over the world.

Each piece describes a real moment that happened in the past, during a time when photography was not a facility in everyone's hands, but rather a way to immortalize the best moments experienced by each family. Analog photography inherently has different colors, contrasts and atmospheres than a digital photo. By translating these images into paintings, the artist’s quest is to rescue the color palette and energy of those bygone times.

Mariel purposefully leaves the identity of the people painted blank leaving the identity in question up to the viewer’s imagination, in turn this allows the images to evolve and receive a new narrative and nostalgic meaning to all who view them.