DREAM ELISAS

From the moment I met Elisa Malo, I was fascinated. Beyond her gentle nature, her soft and harmonious voice, her ethereal physicality—it was her enchanting artistic habitat that captivated me, an invisible place. A realm of deep connection with the ingredient of all that is possible: the central theme of her long-standing research—dreaming. Including its compartments, such as wakefulness, lucid dreaming, and the plants connected to it, like Calea and Floripondio.

Her work acts as a vehicle—it takes us far into images and reflections, diving into that core of contemporary art: desire and the realm of the undefined.

For years, I have held onto that pulsing interest in the immaterial—between the eyes that see outward and those that look within. I’ve almost kept this ongoing fascination with the intangible a secret, as few artists make it the core of their declared practice. Most focus on matter and objects.

Elisa has been able to forge the immateriality of dreaming into drawings and paintings, using paper and sprayers that carry in water and ink the elements and symbols of her dreams. She has found the balance to reveal and make visible in this “world” what resides in the other—the habitat of the psyche, as some psychologists call it, or the world of the nahual, as some shamans name it. Now, at lagos | studios and residencies, Elisa has painted in large formats and has materialized objects that connect both dimensions: small beds and plastic crocodiles, felt and wool dolls.

The narrative of these connective elements will become the stories triggered in each observer. With the principle of Dreaming with Elisas: a crocodile is a plant.

olgaMargarita dávila
Chief curator