Bianca Lee Vasquez

Following a line, a sun-dappled path, a fissure in a rock face - Bianca Lee-Vasquez uses her body as a tool, a vehicle for exploration through which meanings emerge. Working via movement, via gestures in symbiosis with the natural turnings of the earth, whether through drawn image, sculpture, performance or photography, Vasquez’s practice does not impress upon its environment, but rather translates it, un-covering nuances that usually pass undetected by human eyes. Surrendering to entropy, to the impossibility of capturing the transformative and transient, Vasquez enters her practice as one might walk through an unknown landscape, with polite hesitance, curiosity and respect. Inevitably, identity comes into play, like a question posed, the human form is constantly re-purposed and re-placed. We are invited to consider our part in the world, but are warned we should not expect an answer. Faceless bodies move playfully, choreographed by the architecture of a woodland. With damp moss, warm sunlight and the roughness of bark on bare-skin, we embark on a visceral dialogic. The body is at once exposed and camouflaged. Drawing upon her surroundings - whether at home in Paris, sharing experiences with friends and family, or reflecting upon her Cuban-Ecuadorian origins - Vasquez’s practice exposes nature as the great connector, in all places, to all people. Rivers meet, breaking into a clearing and lost landscapes shift, gripped beneath ivy. Bodies arrive and leave each frame. Lands lay, trees stand and nature opens as we embrace in perpetual life, decay, ruin - and again,  life.

3 Grâces

All good things come in threes. The Three Graces, players from Greek mythology. Also known as The Three Charities: as derived from the Greek ‘charis’; they are always giving, abundant and devoted. Charm, beauty and creativity. Daughters, friends and sisters. Each a distillation of a virtue rendered in the flesh. Rendered in Primavera by Botticelli: the idealised body; an eternal spring. Whilst in fistfuls of flesh, Rubens painted their form. For Raphael - they move in symmetry, complementing one another. The 6th Duke of Bedford commissioned them to be sculpted in marble by Canova and installed on a rotating pedestal. For Bianca Lee Vasquez, they are her sisters.

In contrast to the fetishised renderings of The Three Graces that have come before, Vasquez’s photographic triptych reproduces their story with all the subtleties and imperfections only known to the women themselves. Compositional and visual harmonies, consistent across classical versions, are instead reiterated through deep sisterly bonds and friendships. Through her lens, the artist reveals arms that hold, embrace and move protectively around one another. Clinically graceful and performative mannerisms are replaced by the reality of expression, each woman unfazed by the photographer’s presence. As both onlooker and participant, Vasquez usurps the male gaze, becoming the author of her own narrative. Through modern interventions, an apple iPhone and Nike trainers, the image playfully nods towards classical symbols and allegories. Vasquez reimagines reductive stereotypes by weaving bodily truths into this classical myth. Traditionally seen in the company of fertility gods, with toes dipped in the burst skin of ripe pomegranates, these three Graces expose the visceral realities of womanhood. The image bleeds.

Speaking to her larger practice, a process driven by the sincerity of human interaction and experience, Vasquez’s Les Trois Grâces, works to humanise and connect us to our historicised pasts. Vasquez locates the body in nature, recognising its rightful place there.

The artwork is a reinterpretation of Les 3 Grâces with Anastasia Finders and Constanza Piaggio. Shot by Bianca Lee Vasquez in Galluis, France, April 2020.