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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.

Works at ARCOmadrid 2025

Clara Sánchez Sala
À mon seul désir
2025
Makeup on silk
133 x 163 cm

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
Mettersi un velo davanti agli occhi
2024
Makeup on silk
92 x 92 cm

Works at ARCOmadrid 2024

Clara Sánchez Sala
Mamelon de beurre
2023
C-print on cotton paper
60 x 90 cm
Ed. 1 de 3 + PA

Clara Sánchez Sala
Platearon mi sien
2024
Natural hair plated in gold and silver
40 x 4 cm each (x2)

Clara Sánchez Sala
Let’s dance, I’ll be around
2022
Paper pulp
190 x 190 cm

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

Clara Sánchez Sala
Ofelia I
2022
Botanical print on cotton
59 x 79 cm

Clara Sánchez Sala
Ofelia III
2022
Botanical print on cotton
61 x 79 cm

Clara Sánchez Sala
Ofelia II
2022
Botanical print on cotton
78,5 x 87 cm

Clara Sánchez Sala
Desnudar-vestir
2021
Porcelain and plaster
Variable measures

‘’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

Clara Sánchez Sala
Carne y piedra
2021
Print on cotton paper and cloth
70,5 x 50 cm each [diptych]

Clara Sánchez Sala
Vidriera
2023
Resine, paper and lipstick
70 x 50 cm

Clara Sánchez Sala
Módulo para levantar columnas
2021
Plaster
Variable measures

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