Hulda Guzmán
The Nightmare (from the series Be Kind to Your Demons)
2018
Be Kind to Your Demons (The Nightmare), 2018
In The Nightmare, from the series Be Kind to Your Demons, Hulda Guzmán presents a number of scenes in which female characters carry out mundane activities in the company of secondary characters (mostly men) and devil-like creatures. Like a large part of her work, Be Kind to Your Demons is an invitation to embrace the devil in each of us, to surrender to bodily and external pleasures and to engage in a conscious dialogue with our own existence. Guzmán’s paintings are a reminder of the brevity, potential intensity, and frailty of human existence.
Hulda Guzmán’s paintings blend magical realism, the supernatural, extra-sensorial, and the pleasures of earthly existence set in the context of tropical landscapes or modernist architecture. Her delicate use of gouache and ink on wood and sophisticated compositions portray scenes that speak both of a Dominican and Caribbean identity, and of her personal view of the world. Often self-referential, Guzmán’s works are colorful, mystical, and ecstatic. They depict intimate or public, celebratory and sensual (if not directly sexual) scenes, encounters, or gatherings which feed from her upbringing in a liberal context. Her seductive scenes often include herself, her partners and friends, and members of the Dominican artist community. The artist reaffirms and questions tropes associated with the Caribbean such as hot weather, an inclination to festivity, and an amalgamation of religious traditions. Like many Dominicana artists, her work is determined by the insularity of the country, by its crafts traditions, and by the sea.