Behind the Glowing Glass

I’d like that to contemplate the aquarium would provoque a sort of vertigo as if you were seeing the remains of a forgotten ancient civilization.
I want something intangibly magical in this landscape of futurist and luminous ruins.
That it would feel somehow unreal but that the inhabitant creature would make it real and so it would remain in thar liminal space.

A young artist travels to an art school in Scotland, where she begins the creation of an ambitious work: a futuristic aquarium inhabited by an axolotl, a small Mexican amphibian she calls Charlie. The relationship she establishes with this creature leads her to an ethical crisis that confuses her about the role of art and her work as an artist. Nevertheless, she moves on. In the same way that the axolotl adapts to this new aquarium set up in a Scottish art school, the author integrates herself into a society different from her own. Both, the axolotl and the author, are beings who are installed outside their habitats and customs that can be observed through this glass.

Key points

• Shows from an insider point of view the creative process of making an artwork.
• It explores ideas such as historical and ethical issues regarding the appropriation of nature and our responsibility towards other living beings.

Antonia Bañados

2020 – Six place in The Unpublished Picturebook Showcase
2018 – Young Art Municipal Prize, Honourable Mention in Drawing/Illustration
2016 – Royal Watercolour Society of London, Jackson’s Young Artist Prize