Sandra Mack-Valencia’s work has been exhibited in museums, galleries, and institutions in Colombia, Japan, Paris, and the United States. She is a recipient of the Nathalie Angles Award, the Sommerville Arts Prize, and was nominated for the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Her work was selected as part of the (S) Files Biennial at El Museo del Barrio in New York. Sandra was chosen as one of the Outstanding Antioqueños in the World, and her art practice was featured in a documentary that aired at her native city.
Sandra Mack-Valencia grew up in Colombia, where under the smell of oil paint, turpentine and linseed oil in her father’s studio, she developed a passion for the arts, in particular for painting and drawing. After receiving her BFA from the Universidad de Antioquia, she moved to New York and finished her MFA at Hunter College.
Sandra was recently invited through Art Connects NY to be part of a permanent exhibition at the Fortune Society in New York in April 2016, and she is one of the invited artists to show at the annual exhibit at St. Paul the Apostle Church in NY in August 2016.
This painting happened very organically, meaning that one shape lead to the other, and the composition kept evolving based on what was appearing on the surface. Initially, I had considered making just one elephant carrying this dense shape, but after playing around with the images, it was clear to me that it had to be 2 elephants going separate ways, but sharing the same body and the same weight. As it kept evolving, I couldn’t help but to think about this country’s current state. I have all kind of friends and acquaintances, some of them with polarized political opinions. I hear them talking, and posting on their Facebook pages, defending with passion their ideas, each one of them believing they hold the truth, and it makes me proud to have such passionate friends, but then I also see families falling apart, siblings and friends terminating their relationships, and just a deep gap that keeps growing and setting us apart. In “The Agreement” I am looking for that equilibrium, that compromise where we understand that sometimes we have to agree to disagree, because at the end, we are all pretty much the same, we all carry our heavy loads, and life is so much lighter when we share the weight.
