ARTIST BIO
My name is Susana Vasquez Torres and I am a Peruvian artist living in Berlin. I was born in the chaotic and incredible city of Lima in 1990. In 2010 I started my artistic education at the National School of Fine Arts of Peru (ENSABAP) from where I graduated in 2016 in Fine Art with focus in painting. In 2018 I moved to Berlin looking for new horizons for my artistic process and to study the master’s degree Art in Context at the Berlin University of Art, which I finished in 2022.
In my artistic projects I work with different disciplines such as painting, performance, graphic arts, animation and video. I am also passionate about artistic mediation, art education and the artistic use of public space. And how from the latter we can position ourselves as a community and inhabitants of a city.
My artistic practice is feminist and is part of the fight against patriarchy. From there have emerged the projects Irremediable mar, about the role of women in the history of Peru; En casa, which deals with domestic violence; Las horas heridas, about feminicide and Bleeding Stories, a project on the thema menstruation. Bleeding Stories is a project on which I am currently still working and which aims to generate collective knowledge from sharing. I have also work in personal projects that follow a process of introspective research and affections such as La genética espiritual, about my family history; El monstruo, on the thema emotional grief and Endometriosis.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I am a feminist artist. I developed my projects from the awareness of the oppression that patriarchy exerts on our lives and bodies. My work seeks to position itself in front of this, to learn from others, work collectively and connect with our experiences as social and political individuals.
My creative process begins on the experience, affections and emotions with which we face the world. These become sensorial: images and sounds that are transformed in artistic projects. The medium that I use responds to the project I am working on, most of the time I combine different mediums in one project. As an interdisciplinary artist I have made work in performance, video, collage, animation, installation, printmaking and community art.
My motivation to create is to express, exchange and connect. Sometimes I create from anger and indignation, sometimes from joy and sorority and sometimes from sadness. Thus, my work seeks to generate different emotions in the viewer: to move, to empathize, to discomfort.
My artwork does not try to give answers but to generate questions.