„Really, I live in dark times!“

The German-Mexican post-conceptual artist Sandra del Pilar, born 1973 in Mexico City, received a Master’s degree (2007) and a Doctorate (2019) – both in painting – from the Academia de San Carlos, resp. the Faculty of Art and Design at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City. Prior to that, she had gained a Magister (1998) in Art History at the Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf and also done a Doctorate there (2006).

Sandra del Pilar is a member of the famous Mexican Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte (SNCA). In Germany she held a scholarship from the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (Academic Foundation of the German People) and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service). She has received numerous awards for her works, which are represented in museums, public and private collections, in art galleries, at art fairs and biennials in Mexico, Germany, Turkey, France, Belgium, China and Bolivia. In 2019 a documentary film about her work by Sergio Sanjinés was premiered in the Cineteca Nacional in Mexico City. It was subsequently shown above all at Latin American film festivals and awarded prizes.

Sandra del Pilar formulates her disturbing subjects in a figurative visual language. Her themes revolve around the various forms of power: the power of interpretation, the power of definition, the power of violence, the power of asymmetrical relation-ships, the power of the visibility regime, and so on. However, this power is never „illustrated“, „represented“ or „depicted“. Instead, it is always made physically tangible through the technical refinements of her highly complex painting, an elaborate process developed by her. The painting itself is also reflected upon as a medium and setting for the „aesthetic event“.