In this Open Studio, Daniela Negrete presents the processes she developed during a three-month residency in Lagos, made possible through the support of Amplia Galería. The work bears witness to a decisive and courageous transition: the journey from academic figurative painting toward a vibrant contemporary practice. This shift enabled her to create from a different way of thinking—one that observes affect directly through materials.

Throughout these ninety days, Negrete granted herself permission for absolute experimentation in order to reconnect with her original creative instinct. Along this path of expressive transformation, the artist began with two clear premises: to abandon centralized composition and to break away from traditional figuration. She started by "loosening the hand" through color. From there, she arrived at the principle of sensoriality through the skin, recognizing that, as the body's largest organ, all sensation and the world's impact begin there.

Like a logbook documenting a move, the fourteen works produced during the residency reveal the creative honesty with which Daniela approached each step, exposing the passion, discipline, commitment, and profound attachment she holds toward the act of painting.

Skin as Horizon serves as the conceptual axis of the first nine works created during the residency's initial half. In these pieces, Negrete experimented with cyanotype, seeking the direct imprint of her own body upon the support, moving away from representation toward presentation. Through deliberately "ugly" stitches, she incorporated textile elements into the work. She also combined the technique with materials from her previous practice—such as plush fabric, paint, and found textiles—approaching them through a renewed expressive language. Her aim was to move beyond symbolic narrative in favor of conceptual visualities, where material, expression, and content maintain a rigorous unity of meaning.

Midway through the residency, the work reveals a new conceptual approach: The Friction Between the Body and the World. The piece The Friction Between the Body and the World_1 symbolically marks the residency's major turning point. Here, the expressive shift becomes unmistakable. At the center of the work lies an element made of cold porcelain that preserves the imprint of the palm of the artist's hand. By exposing what is normally hidden, the interior and sensibility of the fingers unfold, from which bursts an explosive outgrowth of paint and soft, fibrous material that releases pure sensory essence.

The following work in the sequence, although presented as a painting stripped of additional materials, gives its name to the second phase of the residency: The Palimpsest and Expanded Painting. Here, Daniela renders her inner expression without formal intermediaries. The unrestrained traces of her body, enveloped within a chromatic interplay, are suspended through the joining and layering of painted canvases. It is at this moment that the artist presents herself as a palimpsest of her own being—a recovery of collected dreams, reconnecting with and reclaiming them from before she had learned the formal conventions of figurative painting.

From this act of self-recognition, the artist reimagines her surroundings and projects the idea of Expanded Painting. Through two subsequent works, printed fabrics begin to function as her painterly palette, while carefully executed cutouts extend the composition onto the wall. Through this gesture, the wall—the traditional support—ceases to be a passive container and instead becomes an active component of the work itself.

With precision, determination, and strength, Daniela Negrete consolidated over the course of these three months a profound and radical transformation in her painterly practice. Her approach to the canvas, now undertaken from a place of directness, results in an expression that is lighter, more focused, and more deeply connected to herself, where concept and material emerge as the central concerns of artistic form.

Olga Margarita Dávila

Chief Curator

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