Although Francisca Sosa López’s practice expands out in many different directions, she is first and foremost a painter. The idea of ‘reconstruction’ is central to her practice; growing up in Venezuela and seeing the damage done to her home town of Caracas has resulted in a boundless appreciation for different materials, resurrecting discarded matter and elevating it, through assemblage and the application of paint, to the status of art.
This sensibility around materials, regeneration and sustainability can be seen in the formal qualities of the work: Sosa López sews canvases together, choosing to stitch and hang them loosely, as opposed to stretching them over wooden bars, to ensure every part of the canvas is used. In other works she layers and splices together bits of discarded cardboard before painting over the surface. Debris often forms the basis of the work. There is an element of creative determinism at play here, the odd, asymmetrical outlines of the works are fixed by the properties of the raw material, the work takes whatever shape the materials do. Sosa López remarks that “the less perfect the shapes are, the more life they seem to have. They look rebellious.”
Sosa López dyes her fabric works with WikiWiki (a Venezuelan dye) then discolors them with chlorine. She applies paint in numerous layers, first watering them down, which gives them a translucent quality that allows the layers below to be visible. The watery nature of the paint allows for it to be dripped on to the work, this inevitably leaves blank areas that are filled in later with a range of materials including chalk, crayons, pastels and markers. The works are then finished with a lines of embroidery. As she explains, “some lines come with beading, beads I bought in downtown Caracas and traveled with to add to my London paintings. Some beads are from old necklaces and others my mom or aunt had lying around. The combination of all these objects and the care and slowness that comes with this last part is, I feel, an ode to femininity. Women are detail oriented. Women in Venezuela are coquettish. We layer necklaces, and bracelets and earrings. Being pretty, dressed with plenty of accessories, heels, makeup and having our hair done is part of what is imposed onto you as a female from my country. Doing anything else, is looked as quirky and sometimes weird. Therefore, my paintings are “decorated” as I have learned to decorate myself.”