Angyvir Padilla presents Una mirada que lo abarca todo (A Gaze That Encompasses Everything), featuring works developed from her recent exhibition at FRAC Dunkirk and inspired by a mountain legend from her childhood in Venezuela.
According to Venezuelan legends, there were once no mountains in Caracas. The land was flat, and the sky stretched all the way to the sea. One day, the sea goddess—enraged by insults from local tribes—summoned the highest wave ever from the ocean’s depths. But before it could crash upon the land, she felt compassion for its people. Instead of unleashing destruction, she transformed the wave into a mountain range—the Cordillera de la Costa—which now surrounds and protects Caracas.
During her time in Northern France, Angyvir searched for an "analogous" mountain—a form that could resonate within the European context with the mythical mountain from her youth. She discovered it in the mining regions, where terrils—man-made hills of mining debris—define the landscape. These curious, conical mounds, though artificial, create an unexpected topography on the horizon: silent witnesses to human labor, yet possessing an almost natural monumentality.
It is precisely this tension between memory, myth, and material reality that lies at the heart of her exhibition.
