Sandra Vásquez de la Horra: Reading the Waves at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea is presenting Reading the Waves, new work by Sandra Vásquez de la Horra and her first exhibition with the gallery. It runs from September 10 to October 29, 2026.

Born in Viña del Mar, Chile, in 1967, Vásquez de la Horra lives and works in Berlin. She studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and then at the Kunsthochschule für Medien in Cologne. Drawing anchors her practice, which draws on spiritual mythologies, folklore, religious iconography and Latin American popular imagery, together with an anthropological interest in healing practices and indigenous knowledge. Her subject is the interdependence of the human body and the natural world. She dips paper in beeswax or folds it into accordion-like sculptures, changing its character while keeping it translucent. Recent solo shows include Haus der Kunst in Munich (2025–2026) and the Denver Art Museum (2024), and her work is held by the Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou and Tate, among others. She received the Käthe Kollwitz Prize in 2023.

The show centers on the idea of reading signs in nature. Children instinctively watch and interpret weather and the environment, then learn that such phenomena are fleeting and beyond human control. Clouds, rainbows and waves stand in for that widening awareness of the forces shaping our lives.

In the main gallery, monumental drawings form a circle in a chapel-like arrangement oriented by the cardinal points and the sun, tying together landscape, body and spirituality. Large triptychs portray Olokun, the Orisha of the deep ocean, alongside marine animals and crustaceans.

Upstairs, a suspended leporello in the large gallery features Yemanyá, the Orisha of the ocean and rivers, as a tribute to the nearby Hudson River. Visitors can walk around it and see both sides of the paper sculpture. The smaller upstairs gallery turns to plants and their auras, and includes a large triptych of Pacha-Mama, the mother goddess whose energy sustains all life. Beeswax coats every work, offering the paper protection and an alchemical transformation while linking the practice to the organic world.