October, 1989
México
Chantal Meza is a self-taught painter living and working in the United Kingdom.
Her works speak to the intimate and the most timeless of all shared human questions. Key themes in her work have concerned enforced disappearance, the destruction of ecologies, pain and suffering, the annihilation of worlds, the impact of technology on societies, and what it means to be human on this endangered planet. Through these encounters, she has addressed aesthetic concerns with wounding, the psychology of loss, memory and forgetting, the spectral traces of history, and the complex topography of that absent space called the void.
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Chantal is also firmly committed to the public and educative value of art, with her works featuring in prominent university settings and other public spaces to inspire new conversations.
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Chantal's original work offers a marriage between the contemporary and the ancestral. Her home environment placed her amongst many local stone artisans whose unique regional skills date back to the pre-Hispanic period. Chantal has incorporated this knowledge into her paintings, including the direct use of hands as a medium of human sensorial creation. The result is the creation of new visual memories of experience that allows her to connect the abstract with the raw realities of life.
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Chantal uses the ancient form of abstraction as the language that will gesture her concerns around the political-scientific sphere by observing the history of power within social constructs and its shifting relations. Her challenge as such remains how to express the abstract in thought by tapping into the complexity of the human condition. Oils, stone, watercolours, charcoals and inks are some of the materials she has taken to focus on the human psyche as seen through the prism of colour.
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Chantal’s works have been exhibited in more than 30 group and Individual Exhibitions in prominent Museums and Galleries in Mexico, United Kingdom, Paraguay and Germany such as: Chiapas Museum of Science and Technology (Mexico), National Art Museum (Mexico), Centro Cultural Juan de Salazar (Paraguay) Museum of Modern Art (Mexico) CentreSpace Gallery (United Kingdom) Watercolour National Museum (Mexico) Arocena Museum (Coahuila) Karlstorbahnhof (Germany) Arroyo de la Plata Gallery (Zacatecas) Popular Art Museum (Mexico) MOMA Machynlleth (Wales) Guadalupe Museum (Zacatecas) Pape Museum (Cohauila) University Cultural Complex (Puebla) among others. She has also been commissioned to produce public works, interventions, while providing requested donations of works to institutions and non-governmental organisations.
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As part of her ongoing interest in the educative value of art, she has delivered Lectures, Seminars and Panels at reputable places such as: Harvard University (USA), École Normale Superiéure (Paris), McMaster University (Canada), Goethe Universität (Germany), Centre for Mexican Studies (Ireland), Goldsmiths University (London) among others. She has written a number of academic articles in prominent theory, culture and educational practice journals, her first edited volume “State of Disappearance” was published by McGill Queens University Press.
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​Having presented her work in an individual curated exhibition at the age of 20, since then Chantal's work has received considerable acclaim. Her work has received the support of grants, public recognitions and awards of prominent institutions in the cultural sector, among her current achievements include a notable public recognition for her contribution to culture in her province in Puebla, Mexico.
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Her artwork appears in many prominent international outlets, books, digital and print magazines, including La Jornada, ArtLyst, Trebuchet, W&F Science & Peace, LA Review of Books, The Philosopher among others.
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For Chantal 'the shape of the abstract senses' remains a primary concern, as it gestures to what remains within and yet seems ungraspable. In her work a constant realisation remains, that in which what we are is never enough, perhaps too unreal that most of our intended actions are kept in the realm of the imagination. Mindful of this, she is confronted with a dilemma; showing how an abstract sensibility is all we could fleetingly possess.
In this regard, Chantal’s range of work offers visual dynamic confrontations, tapping into the complexity of the human condition. In a world dominated by Science and Technology, her paintings have become a mediation between the mystery and the unknown, letting her hands to become the bridge that transmits the inner most feelings to the external world.
@Karl Baker
As someone who believes in the art of life. Chantal co-creates in this world with her soulmate, the Political Philosopher Brad Evans, who inspires her to live as a constant explosion of shapes.