Kuska

Kuska (Alejandra Corral) dedicates her practice to the lives of prostitutes, but her perspective is far from the usual clichés. It’s not a question of objectivity in her art, but a mix of brokenness and tenderness that we can think of as being sense of reality. This is what is reflected in her repeated images displaying actions and feelings, without recurring to morbidity or sentimentality.

Her scenes are set in anonymous rooms decorated with cheap furniture that don’t hide the essence of the work relationships: one gives life in exchange for money. She uses the technique of collage, mixing things that are as contrasting as the decoration of the rooms in which the actions are set.

But the most impressive characteristic of her works is the combination between the flatness of the background and the volumes of the characters. These bodies are depicted through contour lines, as if Alejandra were treating her characters from a scientist’s perspective, emphasize their materiality and not the fact that they are conscious of anything. And still, they are (and we are) conscious beings, for whom all this is sometimes simply unbearable. But finally, “every life can be lived”, as Rilke once said.