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Marianela de la Hoz is a Mexican visual artist with over 16 years of experience. She has achieved considerable success in her career in her native Mexico; her artwork has been exhibited in prestigious galleries as well as in several museums, universities and cultural institutes across Mexico. Her paintings have also been exhibited abroad, namely in Canada, Venezuela. Dubai, Japan and presently in the USA, where she resides since 2001.
Marianela basically paints miniatures using the ancient technique known as Egg Tempera, with a contemporary look into nowadays images; the works are extremely detailed, delicate and precise. She seeks to offer insights into the hidden character of her subjects through visual codes and exaggerated features. Her version of magic realism has been termed “white violence” because of her use of black humor and fantasy to depict the darker side of humanity. The miniscule scale of the paintings demands close scrutiny, further emphasizing their sometimes subtle distortions and glimpses into a world of childish dreams.
The conducting thread that joins all her artworks is the series of canons of the aesthetic trend called Hemofiction which was born as a literary genre and which she adopted for her painting. The blood ligatures among all human beings, the same weaknesses, addictions and worries; different symptoms but always searching for that bind located in the interior, in the blood, in the conscience.
Like a researcher she puts under the microscope a drop of the blood of each theme, each painting, she analyzes it without moral judgments, observing its composition, hence the small formats, the observer approaches the lens to peer into a miniature world, to introduce a key and enter armed with a magnifying glass, expecting to come close enough to hear a whisper, to feel a pinch, to discover a hidden secret, to crack a smile before a subtlety loaded with black humor.
The contents, the formats, the technique, the texts (written thoughts), all conform a different work of art and invite the observer to approach, to get closer and closer, thinking perhaps that by being small they are harmless; like a spider draws a fly into its web, Marianela de la Hoz seeks to entrap the viewer rationally as well as viscerally.