ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

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Innocent and delicate in appearance, Raquel Jiménez Molina’s work questions the narratives that have shaped cultural perceptions of women and femininity throughout history. Clothing, hairstyles, and adornments serve as resources for Raquel that she inserts into visual and conceptual narratives. Inspired by rural life, medieval tales, and fantasy novels, these elements enable her to subvert the archetypes that contribute to perpetuating the image of women as passive objects.

 

References to fairy tales or to what the artist calls “good girl clothes” highlight how certain symbols have been used to reinforce expectations of obedience, purity, and conformity in women’s live trajectories, concealing an implicit meaning that makes it difficult to imagine them outside certain traditional roles, restrictive of their freedoms and aspirations.

 

Thus, the artist offers new readings to the visual codes that have historically been used to define women, infusing them with autonomy and determination. A good example of this is her use of color, which Raquel employs as an allegorical language while adding another dimension to her visual discourse. Red, symbol of passion or danger, is redefined in her paintings as a symbol of disobedience. Inspired by classic figures like Little Red Riding Hood, the artist emphasizes the protagonist’s will to transgress and rebel by disobeying her mother’s advice and venturing into the forest, escaping the moralistic interpretation of her story’s outcome. In this way, Raquel proposes small acts of insurrection against the dominant narratives and focus on the woman as an active agent while challenging the role of victim or antagonist to which she has been recurrently confined in classic tales.

 

Raquel’s reflection thus transcends the representation of elements associated with women, transforming into an analysis of the power of symbols and attributes in the construction of identity. Focusing her gaze on fragments and details, the artist not only draws attention to the seemingly insignificant but also alludes to the multiple layers of imposed, hidden, or repressed meanings within female identity. Her work, therefore, recovers and rewrites, as she takes elements from the past to challenge their relevance and propose new possibilities of representation. Ultimately, Raquel reinterprets these highly symbolic emblems of femininity to create more complex, realistic, and just narratives. 

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Text by Manuela Medina

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