Gabriela
González Leal

A door was opening to another dimension.
July 10, 2020

It’s been a few years since I adopted the phrase by Rufino Tamayo, one of the most important Mexican painters of the 20th century, that says I am a laborer of my profession who works eight hours a day. As a Mexican woman, an artist and mother of a six-year-old girl, I try to fulfill those eight hours daily, out of the instinct and dedication to my passion that does not allow me to be constricted by ordinary routines and social expectations.

Mexico closed its borders in March, 2020. The world stopped unintelligibly and there was a deafening silence. Despite the uncertainty, there was peace flourishing in every corner of my house. The circumstances gave me time that I craved so much. Without school, schedules, deadlines and homework, not going out to get materials or picking up my daughter, not going to meetings, appointments, events, openings or friend’s dinner parties—everything was cancelled. Everything! The constant movement, that I so often cursed, just stopped and I felt as if a door was opening to another dimension.

The isolation was very therapeutic but at the same time anxiety grew in me. I had headaches, my shoulders and neck got tense, my body was weary for days. It was overwhelming to think of the suffering of the others day after day. Thousands of deaths, so many infected, women living through hell with their abusive spouses. The cases of domestic violence against women and children were rising to scary numbers. Stores closed, the ones we needed most, while the big chains remained open. Zoos lay abandoned, animals unprotected. 

When my daughter was born, the idea of childhood flourished in me. How did my ancestors understand childhood with their Mesoamerican worldview? What is one more girl coming into a world that is so complicated? A world that classifies, annihilates, silences you, minimalizes and corrupts you? What is a girl, when as soon as she is born, becomes a mere number, a color, a race, a gender, a nationality, a border? One girl more or one daughter less? These questions, without answers, I have been exploring in my art over the past six years.

My daughter taught me to give new meaning to the simple, the small, the spontaneous and the ordinary. She inspired me to ask myself over and over: what happens if... What happens if instead of only painting and drawing children on paper and canvas, I explore the aesthetic possibilities of the Mexican dollar in small silhouettes and, upon them, bestow a symbolic value through the heroes of my country and homeland? What happens if I build ephemeral monuments with girls dressed in police uniforms and integrate actions of power that address issues of violence against women?

It is for all these elements that the lockdown has turned into a battlefield and a game. Thanks to my work I could escape into an indissoluble world of my own freedom despite the mandatory confinement. The possibilities kept unfolding in endless questions and answers, that my only daughter has inspired me to reflect upon.

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Gabriela González Leal is a Mexican-born visual artist who works with contemporary and traditional materials. Her work has been shown in Mexico as well as inernationally, with exhibitions in the U.S., Germany, Spain, Argentina, Serbia, Uruguay, Cuba and England. Gabriela’s work is held in numerus private and public collections all over the world. She lives and works in Mexico City. @gabrielagonzalez.art︎︎︎