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Clara Sánchez Sala
Spain, 1987
“Writing is trying to know what we would write if we wrote”
Marguerite Duras, Écrire, Gallimard, 1993
As an echo of the artistic practice of Clara Sánchez Sala, this quote by Marguerite Duras accompanies her entire production to date. If for Duras writing is an intention, for Sánchez, the act of creating is an attempt that takes place in the impossible meeting of past and present.
The artist constantly remembers and measures her favorite trips, the time that elapses between autobiographical events and history. From this poetics of intimacy, she not only recreates her personal history, but also plays with temporal imbalances to awaken a feeling of estrangement from her personal environment.
Clara’s works are indications that point to the heuristic effect of distance. The artist thus places the viewer in the archaeologist’s situation, seeing the pieces as riddles that she cannot directly identify. Sánchez regularly uses this distancing process to question what is seen and what is known, and thus underline the idea of impermanence and incompleteness.
She has participated in exhibitions at the Museum of Abstract Art in Cuenca, Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Fundación MARSO, Fundación Otazu, La Laboral, EACC, and Centro Cultural Conde Duque.
Her work is part of collections such as the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Colección DKV, Kells Collection, and Fundación Otazu, among others.
Clara Sánchez Sala
La Dame à la Licorne. À mon seul desir
2025
Makeup on silk
130 x 135 cm
6.000 € (VAT not included)
À mon seul désir intertwines makeup with the millefleur style present in the backgrounds of various medieval European tapestries and paintings. By painting only the characteristic flowers of the À mon seul désir tapestry on silk using makeup, without the support of the main image, the background—once purely decorative—becomes the sole and central message of the work.
Makeup today tends to be reduced to superficiality, but wearing makeup is telling a story; it is a product, but also a cultural practice. In fact, makeup is a technology of transformation, perhaps even an attempt to alter time within us, making us appear younger, older, healthier when we are sick, or more intriguing. A face that is immune, marble-like, flushed, and above all, at the exact peak of youth; lips that throb and cheeks that reveal the vital force of our bloodstream, like blossoms at the height of their bloom.
Flowers are not a trivial decorative component; they become a constant element laden with meaning. Because they wither quickly, they turn into symbols of the brevity of existence. Yet, like makeup, the general lack of knowledge and the undervaluation of floral painting—often dismissed as feminine «little paintings»—have relegated it to a minor or purely decorative genre.
The six medieval tapestries, gathered under the title «The Lady and the Unicorn,» feature backgrounds rich in nature, immortalized on a red surface. Five of them depict the five senses in their central scenes. The sixth, titled À mon seul désir (By my will alone), is the most enigmatic of all. Perhaps a sixth sense that transcends our earthly perceptions, a gateway to the beyond, to the eternal, to infinity. A renunciation of the temporary pleasures that the senses allow. And what is makeup throughout our existence if not the same? An attempt to transcend our physicality by externalizing the perception we have of ourselves, or transforming ourselves into what we believe we are and need to be.
Clara Sánchez Sala
À mon seul désir
2025
Makeup on silk
133 x 163 cm
Sold. Private collection
Clara Sánchez Sala
Mettersi un velo davanti agli occhi
2024
Makeup on silk
92 x 92 cm
Sold. Private collection
Clara Sánchez Sala
Mamelon de beurre
2023
C-print on cotton paper
60 x 90 cm
Ed. 1 de 3 + PA
2.700 € (VAT included)
For the novices, drinking milk from their teacher signified that entering the convent was like being born again; it also implied that, just as milk is the only appropriate food for a newborn, doctrine should be the only nourishment for the religious woman, sufficient in itself to satisfy her. However, the milk in this case is not merely a nutritious food: it is a liquid that, through its properties, informs the person who absorbs it — meaning it can impact their traits on a physical, psychological, and moral level, even to the extent of altering their very nature. In other words, associating milk with teaching emphasizes the strength and transformative power that instruction can and should have.
Undoubtedly, breastfeeding evokes motherhood in the broadest sense of the word, as it represents the most vital, nourishing, and sustaining form of care. The breast initiates the child’s growth. The act of breastfeeding establishes a physical connection between bodies so close that it allows the infant to hear the mother’s heartbeat while being fed — a sound that endures for as long as life exists.
As if it were a kind of blood transfusion (since a mother’s milk comes from her own blood), a profound connection is established between breastfeeding and infusing life into a body.
This piece is related to a series of sculptures created by the artist, in which she metaphorically seeks to infuse life and nourish the various busts and carvings upon which she places a butter nipple, cast from a mold of her own breast, thus establishing a dialogue between sculpture and the act of breastfeeding and nurturing a baby — an attempt to breathe life into inanimate sculptures through the act of lactation.
Clara Sánchez Sala
Platearon mi sien
2024
Natural hair plated in gold and silver
40 x 4 cm each (x2)
4.600 € (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Let’s dance, I’ll be around
2022
Paper pulp
190 x 190 cm
Clara Sánchez Sala
Parquette Baguette
2024
Bread
Variable dimensions
Installation at JULIO, Paris, exhibition ‘Assemblage #47 L’Art de l’Araignée’.
Clara Sánchez Sala
El cuerpo se convertirá en lo que sea la leche
2024
Butter and bronze
22 x 22 cm
Ed. 1 de 3
4.000 € (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Ofelia I
2022
Botanical print on cotton
59 x 79 cm
3.900 € (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Ofelia III
2022
Botanical print on cotton
61 x 79 cm
3.900 € (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Ofelia II
2022
Botanical print on cotton
78,5 x 87 cm
3.900 € (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Desnudar-vestir
2021
Porcelain and plaster
Variable measures
3.000 € (VAT included)
‘’Regarding the process of creating Desnudar-vestir. Every day when I came home after working in the studio, my clothes were covered in dust and plaster. I wore the oldest and most comfortable clothes I had, because they always ended up dirty. During the Templo-Pladur exhibition, I made a lot of molds and worked with various materials that made quite a mess. When I got home, I would take off my sweater and pants and throw them on the floor. It occurred to me to put them in a box full of plaster, and once it dried, I would pull on the garment, leaving an imprint, like a continuous cycle of undressing and dressing. Thus, my work clothes, which had covered my body, were repeated in sculptural form in the gallery. It was an act of undressing and dressing. I discarded those clothes because they had already served to create the piece; they had become the mold of my body.’’
– Clara Sánchez Sala
Clara Sánchez Sala
Columna de manga larga
2022
Textile printing on fabric and cardboard
58 x 123 cm
3.500 € (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Carne y piedra
2021
Print on cotton paper and cloth
70,5 x 50 cm each [diptych]
3.500 € (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Vidriera
2023
Resine, paper and lipstick
70 x 50 cm
4.600 € (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Módulo para levantar columnas
2021
Plaster
Variable measures
4.600 € (VAT included)
The exhibition “Templo-Pladur” consisted of covering the gallery with nudes. I realized that in Greek culture, the gods are represented nude, something that doesn’t happen in other cultures like Buddhism, Christianity, etc. This caught my attention. When you’re stripped naked, at first, you feel modesty, shame, even humiliation. However, the naked bodies of the gods appear powerful, perfect, almost unreal, as if they were wearing armor. It’s a nude dressed in nudity, as if those sculptures were wearing a costume. With this context, I will talk about the piece Module for Raising Columns. I discovered that when my father was 18 years old, he worked for a sculptor from Alicante and made a mold of his own foot in plaster. That foot had been around my house for years until I rescued it for this exhibition. I decided to make a mold of my own foot, so one foot was my father’s and the other was mine. However, my foot mold suffered several accidents in the studio, and the copies I made got deformed. Interestingly, my father’s foot, which looks idealized, resembles the idea of a foot we all have in mind, more real than my own mold. In contrast, the deformed molds no longer even resemble human feet. I used five feet in total, as five feet was the minimum height for the Greeks to consider it a column.
– Clara Sánchez Sala
Clara Sánchez Sala
Aplicar con los dedos para un efecto más fundente
2022
Coffee and lipstick and cement dyed fabrics
Variable measurements
5.000 € (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Sketch for »Aplicar con los dedos para un efecto más fundente» (1)
2024
Eyeshadow on paper
30 x 50 cm
1.500 (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Sketch for »Aplicar con los dedos para un efecto más fundente» (2)
2024
Eyeshadow on paper
30 x 50 cm
1.500 (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Sketch for »Aplicar con los dedos para un efecto más fundente» (3)
2024
Eyeshadow on paper
30 x 50 cm
1.500 (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Sketch for »Aplicar con los dedos para un efecto más fundente» (4)
2024
Eyeshadow on paper
30 x 50 cm
1.500 (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Sketch for »Aplicar con los dedos para un efecto más fundente» (5)
2024
Eyeshadow on paper
30 x 50 cm
1.500 (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Cariátide
2021
Print on cotton paper, cloth, wood and paper
38 x 28 cm
3.000 € (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Korai III
2021
Cloth, wood and metal
91 x 100 cm
3.100 € (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Korai II
2021
Cloth, wood and metal
83 x 100 cm
3.100 € (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Korai I
2021
Cloth, wood and metal
57 x 100 cm
3.100 € (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Templo-Pladur III
2021
Plaster
250 x 120 cm
4.600 € (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Templo-Pladur II
2021
Plaster
250 x 120 cm
4.600 € (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Templo-Pladur I
2021
Plaster
250 x 120 cm
4.600 € (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Labios de piedra, vestidos de carne
2021
Print on paper and lipstick
40,5 x 33 cm
1.900 € (VAT included)
Labios de piedra, vestidos de carne (Lips of Stone, Dressed in Flesh), by Clara Sánchez Sala, is part of a body of work that draws a parallel between the idea of immortality found in the nude depictions of Greek gods and the nature of exhibition spaces—places conceived to present artworks as if destined for eternity. The piece is included in the project Templo-Pladur, a title that references both the sacred temple and the modern building material used to cover walls and ceilings, introducing not only a temporal dissonance but also a conceptual reflection on the act of dressing or undressing the gallery’s architectural surfaces.
The connection between architecture and the human body is ancient and persistent. In classical Athens, there seemed to be a deep harmony between flesh and stone—not only in the layout of temples and cities, which reflected the Greeks’ idealized vision of the human form, but also in the elevation of the nude to a revered artistic subject. The friezes of the Parthenon depict youthful, perfect bodies in an otherworldly nudity, alluding to an immortal reality.
This visual experience—one that ennobles and idealizes—resonates with Brian O’Doherty’s interpretation in his seminal essay Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space. There, he defines the modern gallery as a space designed to suspend the viewer in a timeless state, creating the illusion that the artwork already belongs to posterity, or exists in a kind of limbo.
In Labios de piedra, vestidos de carne, Sánchez Sala links that sculptural sense of immortality with the contemporary gallery space. Referencing both divinized bodies and modern construction materials, the work invites reflection on how gallery walls are figuratively «dressed» or «undressed» through exhibition. Just as the marble flesh of the gods becomes part of architectural reverence, so too does the exhibition space emerge as a site of perfection—where artworks acquire an eternal aura. Through this piece, the artist draws a connection between the pristine architecture of the gallery and the impossibly idealized nudity of Greek gods—bodies so unreal and distant they seem clothed in petrified flesh.
Clara Sánchez Sala
Vidriera
2022
Resine, paper and lipstick
47,6 x 27,1 cm
3.500 € (VAT included)
Clara Sánchez Sala
Tous les revetements de la maison
2022
Photography on wooden floor, varnish
43.5×43.5 cm
Sold. Private collection
Clara Sánchez Sala
Tous les revetements de la maison
2022
Photography on wooden floor, varnish
43.5×43.5 cm
Sold. Private collection
Clara Sánchez Sala
Solo exhibitions
2022
Noli me tangere, VARIATION/Paris, Galerie Sator, Paris
Noli me tangere, Campanice, Porto
2021
Templo-Pladur, NF/NIEVES FERNÁNDEZ, Madrid
As respigadoras, Galería do Sol, Porto
Kitchen Table Artist, A Pick Gallery, Turin
2018
El primer obstáculo: La experiencia básica, Galería ATM, Gijón
2017
Fazer Horas, curated by Fátima Lambert, Quase Galeria, Porto
Fazer Viagens, curated by Fátima Lambert, Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis, Porto
Group exhibitions (selection)
2025
Aquí y Ahora, Instituto Cervantes de Paris, Paris
2024
Malas Hierbas, Casabanchel, Madrid
L’art de l’araignée, JULIO, Paris
2023
A prática do infinito pela leitura, curated by Catarina Domingues & Ricardo Ribeiro, Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Guimarães
2022
Art Contemporani de la Generalitat Valenciana V, Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporània, Valencia
2021
Una historia del arte reciente /1960–2020/, Museo de Arte Abstracto de Cuenca, Fundación Juan March
Aragon Park II, Coslada, Madrid
Pot-life, curated by Carlos Fernández Pello, Galería ATM, Gijón
Una conversación sensible al poder, curated by Lola Iglesias, Museo Casa Natal de Cervantes, Madrid
Bio-Lecturas, Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló (EACC), Castellón
2020
Colección XX: Historia del arte, curated by Manuel Segade and Tania Pardo, CA2M, Madrid
Aquelarre, curated by Jessica Berlanga Taylor and Sofía Mariscal, Fundación Marso, Mexico City
El Arca. Lecturas contemporáneas del Archivo de la Villa, curated by Pía Ogea, Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid
Aragon Park, Coslada, Madrid
2019
Tu não viste nada, curated by Tiago Baptista, Duplex AIR, Lisbon
A play of Boundaries, curated by Jaime González and Manuela Pedrón, Galería Carlos Carvalho, Lisbon
Apuntes para un tiempo geológico, curated by Virginia Torrente, Galería Ángeles Baños, Badajoz
Heimat / Mi Tierra, curated by Sofía Mariscal, Fundación Otazu, Pamplona
2018
XXIX Circuitos de Artes Plásticas de la Comunidad de Madrid, curated by Bernardo Sopelana, Sala de Arte Joven, Madrid
Idea, materia y forma: nuevo paradigma de la escultura actual, curated by Cristina Anglada and Gema Melgar, Madrid
2017
Adventus, curated by Pablo L. Álvarez, Galería ATM, Gijón
Anábasis, curated by Bernardo Sopelana, Mustang Art Gallery, Alicante
Narraciones Ficcionales, curated by Semíramis González, Galería 6más1, Madrid
2016
El gran Tour, curated by Beatriz Escudero, Sant Andreu Contemporani, Barcelona
Desdecirse, curated by Carlos Copertone, Galería 6más1, Madrid
La materia errante, curated by Bernardo Sopelana, Alimentación 30, Madrid
2015
No-where: Barcos y Volcanes, curated by Eduardo Hurtado, Salón, Madrid
2014
La Vietnamita, curated by Marlon de Azambuja, OTR, Madrid
2012
Encolectivo, Fundación Antonio Pérez, Contemporary Art Center, Cuenca
2011
Entorno al dibujo, curated by Gonzalo Puch, Faculty of Fine Arts, UCLM, Cuenca
Awards
2020
Grant from the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sports for research, creation, and production in visual arts
2019
Acquisition Prize, Colección Navacerrada
2018
Circuitos de Artes Plásticas Award, Community of Madrid
Creation Grant, Community of Madrid
2017
Injuve Grant for Young Creation
Residency Grant from the Community of Madrid for artists abroad
2016
ESTAMPA Acquisition Prize, Los Bragales Collection
2015
V Encontro de Artistas Novos, Cidade da Cultura, Santiago de Compostela
Getxo Arte, Bilbao
2014
SCAN – International Photography Festival, Tarragona
Residencies
2023
Manoir de la Moissie, creative residency, Belvès, France
2019
Orbital Residency, international residency program for artists, Santander, Spain
2018
ADDAYA – Centre d’Art Contemporani, Palma de Mallorca, Spain
2017
International Residency at Hangar, Lisbon, Portugal
2016
PLUS II, creative and research residency, University of Alicante Museum, Spain
Museums and collections
Generalitat Valenciana Collection, Valencia
Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M), Madrid
DKV Collection, Zaragoza
Fundación Otazu, Pamplona
Colección Navacerrada, Madrid
Colección Kells, Santander
Colección Utópicus, Spain
Los Bragales Collection, Santander