The Path of the Heart | Fernanda Laguna

Laguna has defined an aesthetic of the periphery creating artworks that often incorporate inexpensive or discarded materials with a deliberately naïve sometimes populist sensibility—such as drawings that feature a furry heart as her own avatar as well as canvases with pockets windows and hidden messages. During the 2000s Laguna’s previously discrete writing practice began to intersect with her art practice resulting in the more pronounced use of raw visceral language in her drawings; a change in materiality (including the incorporation of found materials like toilet paper stickers bottle caps and tree branches); and overall artworks that are intentionally crude and roughly executed but at the same time profoundly emotional.
Since the turn of the century Laguna has initiated projects that connect art and community including the widely influential Belleza y Felicidad an art gallery DIY publishing space and art supply store that was the meeting ground for Buenos Aires’s artistic community. Collective initiatives like Belleza y Felicidad will be highlighted in The Drawing Center’s lower level gallery where the artist will install a site-specific archive of hand-drawn murals ephemera videos photos objects booklets and magazines that chronicles her social practice and activism.