22 Sep Nuñez Rojas | Heritage Blood Oil | Curatorial+Co.

Announcing Nuñez Rojas is now represented by Curatorial+Co. Nuñez’s practice is a moving, soulful, and deeply personal expression of her heritage and identity.

Nuñez was born cut from her mother’s belly, upside down, with more hair than you can imagine in 1987, in Valley Azapa, Chile. Her people are a mix of indigenous Chilean, Spanish and African from Kenya. The descendants of slaves are her ancestors, the people who speak to her through her blood.

So it is with her own body, the culmination of each ancestor before her, that Nuñez uses in her art. Channelling her feelings into dance as they nudge her to paint with her body, she steps inside a white space, to draw curves and lines around her being, until the fluid and undulating marks she makes make no sense at all and complete sense at the same time. It is an ode to that dance of freedom her enslaved ancestor first stepped, and through her dance of art, as she spins with ghosts, she arrives, full circle, freeing herself by movement, to create a piece.

It is not only the landscape of her body, that is present in her pictures, but the landscapes of her homes; you can see those mushroom-coloured mountains of Chile, the desert ochres of Arizona, and that blue, blue sea of the Pacific Ocean, the exact colour of her homesickness.

Nuñez now resides in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales with her family and continues to create from her hinterland studio.

Film by Tash Yuncken

Music by Isaac de Heer