Mayra vom Brocke |
by Lucía García Martín
Just days before the opening of her solo booth at NADA Miami —titled No tengo ideas mentales— Argentine artist Mayra vom Brocke welcomes us over a video call from her studio in Barcelona, where her latest works still coexist with the everyday rhythm that sustains her
practice. From the certainty that there is no imagination without reality, she opens the doors and windows of her universe where the fantastic intertwines with the materiality of supposedly inanimate objects.
Having studied art in Buenos Aires and shaped by years of balancing demanding jobs with artistic production, Mayra speaks about her trajectory, acknowledging both the harshness of manual labor and long hours on her feet, and the ways that concrete experience feeds her way of seeing. For her, imagination is not an escape but a reorganization of what is already known: “The unicorn doesn’t exist, but we know horses do exist, and we know horns exist too. So we
invent the unicorn from a base of knowledge, and yes, the result is imaginary, but the grounding is real.”
In her paintings, that grounding appears in recognizable forms—butterflies, shadows, domestic corners—that act as entry points. From there, the image begins to unfold: narrative emerges,
visual memory surfaces, and eventually the artifice of painting itself becomes visible. Ahead of her fair presentation, we explore these delicate tensions with her: the interplay between what’s visible and what’s imagined, painting “what is possible,” and the way a work truly comes alive when it is seen by others.
Lucía: There’s a sense in your paintings of a liminal space where reality folds and another layer appears—more intimate, more unstable, sometimes gentle and sometimes ferocious. How do you approach that transition between the ordinary and the fantastical?
Mayra: What a great question. I’ve been thinking especially about the liminal—those spaces that, in themselves, seem to me the most suitable setting for something unexpected to happen. Liminal spaces often carry a sense of monotony or supposed sterility, as if they exist only temporarily. I’m drawn to the idea of anchoring myself there, in that seemingly secondary space that should lead you to a “main” place, but where things also happen.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about mental images, and about this kind of triad that I still don’t fully understand: imagination, mental image, and painting. I wonder how seeing is a form of thinking. Although everything comes through the eyes, we are the ones who decode it. I’m asking myself questions about that decoding of space. Perhaps what appears as a liminal space has more to do with memory, or with a mental image of the kinds of spaces I construct, even before knowing what I want to depict in the painting. As for my universe, it is made up of various contingent elements, but surrealism functions as a hard core, a kind of operational category: almost an internal guideline for how ideas interact before they translate into a final result. And yet, I don’t know if everything I’m saying fully captures the tone of the works. There is a playful aspect in the process, and in this formula, the whimsical joining of elements carries a lot of weight. It’s not “unexpected”; it’s whimsical. Like saying: “I’ll put together an umbrella and a cake.”
L: A certain sensuality runs through your imagery, moving toward objects, small gestures, or surfaces that lightly touch. What role does desire play in the way you construct an image?
M: Yes, totally. Everything is connected. Maybe I also end up speaking in a kind of torrent, but when I think about desire, I believe we all share one fundamental desire: not to feel alone.
L: To feel heard.
M: Yes, to feel listened to, recognized—and also to acknowledge something important: that even when we want to be alone, we’re never entirely alone. And that carries a lot of weight when thinking about artistic practice as an internal process but also a dialectical one: a constant interaction between the one who looks and the one who produces. It’s in that back-and-forth where the work is forged. I’m not someone who believes that an artwork has meaning on its own; I think a work always makes sense in relation to another person.
My desire when constructing an image lies precisely there: between the intention to communicate and reach out to someone else, and the intention to exist myself in that gesture—in what I’ve decided is my vocation. Art occupies a somewhat Manichean position in relation to desire, because it’s a discipline that is heavily questioned, one onto which a certain expectation of grandeur is projected, the idea that it should deal with big themes. And sometimes it doesn’t happen that way: a work can be disappointing in that sense and still be doing something important, even if it’s not monumental, even if it doesn’t have an overt political commitment. That commitment may seem small, but it’s still there.
If an artwork can show that something can become something else—if it proposes the possibility of transformation—that operation, which might appear banal in my work, where the motifs themselves seem banal, actually has enormous force. Because if that capacity for analysis and displacement carries outside the white cube, beyond the exhibition or the museum, into other spaces, then a real kind o knowledge about how to transform appears. And that is powerful.
I don’t know... I think the kind of politics I’m talking about is poetry. Poetry as a form of transformation. I don’t know if I’m saying something that makes sense, but that’s how I think about it. Many women in Surrealism maintained a deep connection to poetry. Your titles suggest a similarly literary sensibility. How does literature inform your practice, and in what ways does it enter your process?
L: Since you mentioned poetry and that narrative dimension in your work, I wanted to ask you about literature. Your titles have something very evocative and literary. How does literature intersect with your practice? Are there readings or writers you feel close to?
M: I think literature has always been at the center of how I look at things. When I was very young, my mother used to read me the original Grimm brothers’ tales: they were raw but extremely eloquent, full of transformations and images that—without me knowing—shaped a sensibility deeply tied to surrealism and narrativity.
Another fundamental figure for me is María Elena Walsh. I grew up with her children’s songs, which had that double language capable of speaking to both the child and the adult at the same time. She was profoundly surrealist, feminist, and very aware of the ways in which she could represent the world. Her Veo Veo encyclopedia also marked me deeply: it presented everyday scenes, almost like small Gardens of Earthly Delights, where she naturalized other possible ways of living and of inhabiting roles. It was published in installments through Página 12, a progressive Argentine newspaper. That stayed in me.
And more recently, Silvina Ocampo. She’s a writer who remained in the shadow of figures like Bioy Casares, Borges, or her sister Victoria Ocampo, yet her work moves me profoundly. One of her stories, La red (The Net), was the starting point of my latest show. I’m fascinated by how she can speak about the human through something as small as a butterfly. That operation— where anything can speak about anything—also appears in my painting.
I think my connection to literature plays out there: in the idea that image and word brush against each other, complement each other, and also diverge. The image can do what the word cannot, and the word can do what the image cannot. My paintings often inhabit that liminal place, like captures of a moment that had a before and will have an after, almost as if they belonged to an ongoing narrative.
L: I know you’ve had very different jobs and that your path has shaped the way you see and produce. Do you recognize yourself in that dual position of being both subject and object of your work? In what way does your experience—your history, your jobs, your daily life —become image?
M: For me, painting is, above all, an artifice where the body leaves its trace: the presence of the gesture, the facture, the energy that sustains the image. That is where I feel that crossing between subject and object is most clearly. And then there’s life: inevitably, we are who we are, we come from where we come from, and that starting point shapes everything. I never thought of my practice as something separate from my experience. In fact, before I was able to dedicate myself fully to painting, I went through many jobs—waitress, nanny, English teacher, luxury perfume sales associate, even working at La Sagrada Familia—and all of them shaped my view of social structures, of how the world and work operate.
Those contexts gave me a perspective on fragility, resilience, the economy of time and energy. And I think all of that enters the work, not literally, but in the sensitivity with which I observe and build an image. I don’t believe the artist has to “solve” anything or bear grand mandates, but I do believe in a politics of particularity, in the micropolitics of poetry, in the possibility of transforming something through a small gesture. In that sense, my body is inside the work: as measure, as limit, and as tool. And also as a trajectory: everything I lived in order to sustain my practice ends up filtering into how I look, how I decide, and how I paint.
I really liked that question. I hope so—that a personal mythology is emerging through my work. Hearing you say it actually makes me very happy. I thought, “Well, maybe it does look like the beginnings of a personal mythology. Hopefully.” Sometimes I feel my works operate like small autonomous worlds: objects, animals, or scenes that seem ordinary but somehow breathe and acquire another life within the painting. There’s something of the surrealist tradition in that idea that things can be more than one thing at the same time, that the visible coexists with the intangible, that the recognizable blends with the unexpected.
For example, in my first show, Recipientes y gatos (Containers and Cats), I combined two seemingly arbitrary themes: containers and cats. At first, they appeared disconnected, but little by little, I discovered more complex interactions between them. That capacity to see how elements “breathe” or relate, even minimally, interests me a lot: it's a gesture of creating for the sake of creating, of allowing the painting to develop its own logic even when there's no practical reason for what appears on the canvas. I think all my series are linked by this way of operating: the subject may shift, but painting as a discipline and process remains. Each series lets me explore new relationships, new games between objects, figures, and atmospheres, and in that unfolding, something of that “personal mythology” you mention begins to show. There are no definitive answers; every work opens new questions, new possibilities.
L: Sometimes we also find the answers when new questions appear.
M: Yes, like there’s never really an end... I’ll keep thinking about the mythology idea.
L: In your work, there’s a very beautiful tension between the delicacy of gesture and the intensity of matter. How do you negotiate that pulse between the soft and the brutal, between what appears and what insists?
M: I’d say I always try to make the painting soft, but it often ends up being brutal—and that’s part of the game. I think I have a starting point, an idea of the image, but the work itself ends up taking me where it wants. The image I imagine in my head rarely coincides exactly with the painting that appears on the canvas.
My process varies: some paintings emerge quickly, almost instantly; others require more reflection. The scale also shapes the narrative complexity—I tend to work with sizes that have an ergonomic relationship with human perception and the domestic space. Each painting establishes its own rhythm and formal demands: sometimes I notice that an element is missing or excessive, and that “demand of the image” tells me how to resolve it. That formal push not only solves the composition but also enriches the narrative, creating small stories within the image.
I like to think that what seems like a minimal or whimsical gesture—a flower appearing, a shoelace shifting—is the way the painting speaks to me and allows me to intervene, transforming the work organically. That interaction between planning and surprise, between what I decide and what the painting asks of me, is what sustains that pulse between delicacy and intensity, between softness and brutality. I think that’s the key: the very process of painting is a dialogue with the image, a constant negotiation between intention and appearance, where every material gesture can alter the narrative, and every formal limit becomes an opportunity. That tension is what gives the work its life and force.
M: I like Barcelona—especially discovering the city beyond the obvious. Living here is very different from visiting, and there’s something warm and welcoming that allows me to stay connected to Buenos Aires my hometown, and where I had a formal training in the arts, where I learned a lot about management, communication, and the local scene. It was necessary in order to stay. It lasted two years, and when it ended, I wondered whether staying in Barcelona still made sense, but I think this distance is necessary for me right now. I live here without leaving Buenos Aires behind: I go back every year for two or three months, and my gallery represents me there.
I feel I am an Argentine artist, and I never want to stop being one. I’m fascinated by the scene there: I find it vibrant despite the internationalization of Latin American art. I try to stay in touch with both realities—that’s what feels most genuine. And I think my work has indeed changed visually since I’ve been here.
L: How do you think that change has revealed itself?
M:In the forms, directly. I think my paintings have harmonized with the structures of the city. Barcelona has many historical and urban layers that contrast with the newer Latin American cities; those layers of time and form influence how my paintings harmonize. The images transform depending on the dialogue I maintain with both cities. I miss Buenos Aires. I miss it a lot.
You’re asking me this on days when I’ve been particularly... nostalgic.
L: For those who encounter your paintings, there is something like an emotional echo—deeply affective. What kinds of emotions are you trying to register or evoke? Do you work from memory, from intuition, or from the body?
M: Yes, that was the question that complicated things for me a bit, because often I don’t know if I’m voluntarily generating emotions. My operation is fairly rudimentary: I look at the image and see how it functions. I can try to steer interpretation, but there’s always a point that cannot be controlled. At one moment in this latest series, I wanted to generate a sense of peace, so I reduced color, narrative, and landscape elements, although the result still turned out intense.
When I say “I make the painting I can,” I’m referring to that uncontrollable part of how others receive the work. You can adjust the knobs to guide the meaning toward what you want to be interpreted, but there
comes a point where you simply cannot control it. It’s a way of acknowledging limits and accepting the viewer’s unpredictable reception.
L:Is this perhaps related to the title of the show: No tengo ideas mentales?
M: Yes, that phrase stayed. I’d never said it before, but it totally represents me: “I make the painting I can.” It’s basically the same as life: you do what you can. Regarding the idea of the mental image, it’s something I’ve been mulling over. I’m currently reading Rara vez a los ojos by Alex Palacín, which reflects on a painter’s wanderings about image and memory. It was very moving to read because I started to feel understood—someone thinking about the image in the same way I do. He writes something beautiful: he describes how the small things around him form what ultimately becomes the image. Something not
often considered about painters—that they’re empirical.
L: In the context of NADA Miami, your work appears as a pause—a slower, more sensorial space. With this idea of reducing elements in your paintings, what do you hope happens between your pieces and viewers in such a visually saturated environment?
M: I hope people stop for a moment, breathe, and that the booth works as a small refuge. I wanted to recreate a bit of the studio atmosphere, with a metonymic environment: one thing within another, a corner within the fair’s space, where the paintings and viewers interact, casting their own shadows. That the person becomes what the butterfly is in the painting, in that same corner —that in some way it’s me in my studio, and all of us anywhere. I want the simplicity of the works to contrast with the fair’s usual exuberance, and also to have a positive commercial effect without competing through visual loudness.
I’m also very excited about the text written by Juan Laxagueborde—Argentine sociologist, critic, and curator—that accompanies the show. It’s a spectacular essay, very precise, especially regarding the interaction of the butterflies and their shadows, and it brings very rich readings to the exhibition. In a way, the works become independent through his text and open up very beautiful possibilities.
L: Lastly—and perhaps this is a bit pretentious—if you had to describe your universe as a form of writing, or a way of naming the unnameable, what would your images say that words could never say?
M: Oh, I already know the answer to that: the unnameable. I don’t think the question is pretentious, but I would counter it simply by saying: “that’s it, I cannot answer.” Because precisely—if I could say it in words, it wouldn’t be unnameable.
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@mayravombrocke_
@mayravombrocke_