"Yayas"
"Yaya" means "Grandma" in spanish language
This series of bronze portraits stems from both a political and an affective gesture: to inscribe the figure of grandmothers into a material historically reserved for heroes, rulers, and public triumphs. Bronze it is often associated with authority and monumentality, and I want to redirect it toward the domestic, the quiet, and the intergenerational.
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These are not commemorative sculptures in the traditional sense. They do not idealize, but rather
make visible. The portraits affirm the value of lives that have sustained families, cultures, and communities—through care, through knowledge passed down informally, and through presence.
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My grandmothers are not only personal figures; they represent a lineage of resistance and endurance that has long been excluded from dominant historical narratives.
The sculptures were created while my grandmothers were still alive and remained with them in their homes—living with the bodies they represent.
Only after their deaths will the works return to me, turning into physical and emotional witnesses of absence.
In this passage from presence to memory, bronze becomes a medium not only of permanence, but of return. The sculptural bust becomes an act of political tenderness—a way to affirm that intimacy and family memory are not private matters alone, but structures of cultural survival.
