Paula Quintela

Initially inspired by the forms of branches and fallen trees in the vicinity of the creek that runs behind her house, Quintela has given a 3-dimensional form to the creatures that inhabit the forests of her imagination. They stand comfortingly at a human scale, to look you directly in the eye.

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The artist remembers how, for the families of the missing, forensic remains such as teeth and hair were the only remaining traces of the many people who disappeared during the Pinochet regime. As an immigrant, these symbols have now come to represent a universal sense of loss and a yearning for connection with an unrecoverable past.

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Onto the clay and timber, she has added glass eyes, human hair and plastic teeth, in homage to the multitudes who were lost and never found or found and never identified.