Teresa Cabrera Moreno BA (Hons) Fine Art 2020

In my work, I like to combine painting, with photography and text.  I have always shown interest in working accross mediums and I’ve never settled for a sinlge style. In the past, this made me feel like I did’t have an identity in art, but in the present, it has become a very exciting action, to combine the mediums and investigate the chaos of possibilities. For me, it is more about the expression and the idea, than what specific technique or medium I use to make it happen.

My practice, tends to focus on my personal experience and culture. I come from a small tropical and volcanic island situated to the West of Morocco, although politically and economically the island is Spanish, and therefore, European. The Archipielago, is defined as being one of the places with the strongest ‘historical nationality’. This term,  refers to territories whose inhabitants have a strong historically constituted identity, and this is recognized by legislation.

All my life I have been tightly surrounded by the ocean, so when I was growing up and becoming a young adult, I inevitably felt like I needed more. Looking to expand my possibilities and expose myself to life outside the Macaronesia, I moved to the United Kingdom.

Through my art, I express conciousness to certain issues I’ve been exposed to after moving to a different country. The use of Spanish and English words in my paintings, appears as an attempt to express the inescapeable feeling of no-man’s land or limbo, caused by the emotion of being  too Hispanic for English culture, but also leaving my home island because I knew I was not cut for where I was raised either; and this is something that continues to interest me and which is visible in my work.

I use materials and paint to create pieces where I communicate my thoughts and concerns, and where I tell some stories and myths I grew up with in the island, maybe as an attempt to feel understood. I have experienced inequality and discrimination along the way, and this has only provoked an interest to investigate certain political issues, some which involve me directly, and others that don’t affect me first-hand but do interest me deeply.

Although my work tends to focus on personal experience, there is also an on-going tendency to return to neo-expressionism. The juxtaposition of image and layers, makes the work open to multiple interpratations, and accessible to a broad audience internationally.