El Abrigo (The Cloak) by Irene Antich

This painting is part of the studio work I carried out during the confinement of the year 2020 in the worst part of the pandemic in Spain, a moment in which we all lived with a lot of uncertainty and a lot of fear. Many individual and collective emotions were in the air. The work is a self-portrait that evokes a feeling of wanting to go out, of moving, but there is a heavy cloak that the character is wearing, something that protects her and at the same time is difficult to carry. The desire to want to leave but at the same time to feel protected and safe. The composition of the painting is forced, creating tension and movement at the same time, thus reinforcing this duality mentioned before. The large dark block contradicts the light space, like yin and yang, like how contradictory we are.