The work of Ana María Devis is chained by the insistence on the use of certain materials that tell a story, the narrative of her gaze. Since then, Devis has fluidly articulated material work and drawing by incorporating graphic elements within organic materials or drawing in three dimensions and with great precision. These two elements, the graphic precision and the choice of a raw material that speaks for itself, are essential to understand her process. This conjugation of dissimilar elements has prevailed over time during her latest projects, as well as a coherence and subtle concatenation between them, because they come from the same place: her life experiences channeled through her body. 

Using the body as a channel, in this case, has generated long-lasting processes of a meditative quality that are also very demanding on a physical level. Inevitably, her work establishes points of contact with the feminine intimacy as a result of its connection with the body. These points of contact do not occur from a feminist theoretical framework, but rather in the recognition of the life systems that intersect the fact of being a woman - her personal objects, her routines, the network of affections she has with her daughters, her friends, her mother… This work, with the ecosystems of femininity has also resulted in the creation of fictional organisms, some dead beings come back to life through drawing; other disturbing creatures, perhaps even monstrous, are born with the recovery and conjunction of various residues. 

These invented creatures operate within larger environments: none of them are isolated, none of them are unique, and often together they create a kind of intricate, detailed and infinite topology or landscape. The insistent and obsessive character of these ensembles comes, on the other hand, from a personal way of working with the matter which could be described as a form of submerged investigation. It’s about investigating a material by living with it every single day, allowing yourself to feel invaded by it, touching it, constantly seeing it, marinating its presence in a space, almost giving it a home to understand how the body reacts to it.

Inés Arango