Georgina Pounds Gallery opens with Monsters Paradise: The Becoming of Her Divine Beast, the first solo exhibition in Mexico and Latin America by Vanessa Raw.
Opening on February 4, 2026, Raw’s large-scale paintings are symbolically layered, emotionally vulnerable and fiercely dreamlike. Her expansive canvases depict intimate female figures within lush, imaginary landscapes that shift between the mythological and the psychological.
–Interview by Emilio Esquivel del Bosque
Georgina Pounds Gallery in Mexico City opened your solo exhibition Monsters Paradise: The Becoming of Her Divine Beast, unfolding across four powerful gallery spaces. How does this moment feel for you personally and professionally? It’s also your first time showing in Latin America and your first exhibition since presenting work at the Rubell Museum in Miami in December 2024.
It’s one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen, and certainly the most beautiful I’ve shown in. Mexico is such an inspiring place. I feel it comes at a particular moment in my career—a time to play and explore the work—yet within such epic surroundings. I spent the past year painting this new body of work, and I’m excited for it to be seen and exhibited in a new city and, yes, for the first time in Latin America.
What is sensuality and what is beauty? Could you comment on how these two concepts intertwine in your work and where they diverge? Your work often exists in a liminal space between reality and dream. How important is the oneiric, and what role does light play in creating this atmosphere?
Sensuality is about presence; it’s about being fully in the body, listening to instinct and emotion, and allowing vulnerability to exist without apology. Beauty feels more complex. I’m drawn to a beauty that is imperfect and unresolved—something raw, feral, and truthful rather than polished or idealized.
In my work, sensuality and beauty intertwine through embodiment. The figures exist deeply within their bodies and landscapes, often merging with animals and nature, which creates a sense of beauty born from honesty rather than surface aesthetics.
The dreamlike space allows emotion to exist without narrative logic. Light acts almost psychologically rather than realistically. The light, of course, is ethereal in nature. I often create strange areas of light that seem to emit from within the work, whose origins feel confusing or illogical but ultimately become illuminating. You can see this, for example, in the beam of light emerging from the forearm of the figure lying in the foreground in And So It Is (2025).
How do you approach the body as a space of power? In many of your compositions the figures appear at rest, yet they transmit an undeniable sense of elegance and strength. Where does that power come from? Nudity appears in your work not as exposure but as fortitude. What does nudity allow your figures to express that clothing does not?
I approach the female body as a kind of lived landscape rather than an object. It’s a space that holds memory, emotion, and instinct, and one that is deeply connected to the natural world. In the paintings, bodies often merge with animals and landscapes because I see nature as an extension of the body, not something separate from it.
The power comes from stillness and self-possession. The figures aren’t performing or reacting; they are simply inhabiting themselves. That absence of defensiveness creates a quiet authority.
Nudity removes hierarchy and distraction. Clothing carries social codes, time, class, and the presence of the man-made world—all things I intentionally leave out of my paintings. By stripping that away, the body can exist closer to nature, as something elemental rather than constructed.
When a body is partially clothed, it can suggest being dressed or undressed by the viewer, which often shifts the reading toward objectification. Full nudity, paradoxically, feels more closed and self-contained, as if the figures are not offering themselves; they simply are.
You’ve described empowerment as a process of reconnection—with oneself, with nature, and with others. You’ve mentioned that animals can represent “the shadow” in the Jungian sense. Does this idea stem from your interest in psychology? How does this sense of animal freedom mirror or dialogue with the women who coexist with them in your paintings? How do archetypes and animals help you explore aspects of the female psyche such as desire, instinct, fear, or transformation?
Yes, the idea stems from Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow—exploring the entirety of the subconscious, whether memories or aspects of ourselves we don’t like or don’t want to face. I paint animals as wild because they exist without social conditioning. They follow instinct rather than expectation.
The women share that same state. Their freedom mirrors one another; both are untamed, unowned, and emotionally honest.
Archetypes and animals allow me to speak about emotional states without illustrating a literal story. They sit somewhere between the conscious and unconscious, holding instinct, desire, tenderness, aggression, and fear.
Archetypes hold memory and inherited roles. When they appear alongside the figures, they externalize inner experiences, almost as if the psyche has stepped out into the landscape. Transformation then becomes visible.
There is a clear absence of the male figure in your paintings. How important is this decision, and how does it shape the emotional and symbolic space of your work?
For now, it feels like the only way I can paint authentically. When a male figure enters an intimate space, an immediate power dynamic appears and the narrative changes. Creating a female-only environment allows the work to become a place of safety rather than repetition. I’m not trying to recreate trauma, but to transform it.
The absence is less about exclusion and more about protection—a psychological space where the figures can exist without performance or negotiation.
That said, the masculine isn’t entirely gone. Animals sometimes carry that presence. They can be companions, instincts, the shadow self, or even unconscious memories of a man.
Nothing in the paintings is fixed or purely symbolic; the meanings remain open. An animal might feel protective in one moment and unsettling in another, much like memory itself. Within that ambiguity, the work can hold complexity without becoming literal, allowing relationships between women, the body, and nature to unfold more honestly.
Monsters Paradise: The Becoming of Her Divine Beast is a striking and paradoxical title. How does this idea encapsulate the world you create in your paintings? The concept of “the monster” appears frequently in your discourse. What does becoming the monster mean to you, and why do you associate it with beauty and confidence?
It holds the contradiction I’m interested in: safety and danger, tenderness and ferality. A paradise where nothing is fully tamed and where confronting the monstrous becomes a form of peace.
But of course, paradise is also the safe world where we—the monsters—reside, and the world itself might feel like a paradise if we were our authentic selves instead of masked versions.
The monster, to me, is the part of the self that has been labeled excessive—too emotional, too angry, too desiring, too much. Especially for women, those qualities are often something we are taught to soften or hide.
Becoming the monster is the moment when those parts are acknowledged rather than suppressed. When they are no longer resisted, they stop feeling threatening and instead become grounding.
That’s where confidence comes from—not from perfection but from wholeness. I associate it with beauty because beauty, in this sense, isn’t harmony or delicacy; it’s integration. The figure isn’t purified or corrected—she contains contradictions and remains intact.
You reference ancient painters and mythological narratives, particularly from Greek mythology. Are there specific myths, figures, or authors that repeatedly return in your work? Do you see parallels between your work and other ancient cultures, such as Mayan cosmology, ancestral rituals, or traditional fairy tales, especially in how they understand nature, bodies, and transformation?
I’m drawn to myths where women have historically been vilified or turned into monsters, including figures like Medusa, Eve, or Circe, who transforms Odysseus’ men into pigs. I’m interested in rereading these stories and shifting the narrative, reclaiming the word “monster” from something feared into something empowered.
There are many versions of this across cultures: Lilith in Jewish mythology, often cast as dangerous for refusing submission; Lamia in Greek myth, demonized through grief; and figures in folklore and fairy tales where female autonomy becomes something threatening. What connects them is how female agency is repeatedly rewritten as danger.
Regarding Mesoamerican and Indigenous cosmologies—and the parallels with body–earth continuity, cyclical life and death, and feminine power that both nourishes and destroys—I think of Coatlicue, who embodies creation and terror simultaneously, and the Mayan goddess Ix Chel, who represents both healer and destroyer.
Finally, your background as an athlete suggests discipline, endurance, and physical awareness. How has that experience influenced the way you paint, move, and inhabit your artistic process?
That’s an interesting one. I would say, first and foremost, it taught me persistence and how to withstand pain over long periods of time—learning to look only at the ten meters in front of you rather than the miles ahead.
I’m still trying to make sense of why I persevered in sport for twelve years when I was so battered and broken, when perhaps I should have focused on art. Maybe it can’t be fully explained, or maybe it helped build the character I needed to develop the endurance required by the art world.
The main thing it taught me was the act of being embodied—to live and meditate through the body. I think that is crucial as a painter, especially when working on large-scale paintings, and certainly as an athlete.
I’ve also noticed a huge difference between painting from a place of confidence and painting from a place of doubt. I learned that the hard way while competing. If you’re painting from doubt and fear, the viewer can feel it—perhaps because fear comes from a sense of disconnection.
Visit the exhibition
Dates: February 4 to March 22, 2026
Visiting hours: Wednesday to Saturday from 11 am to 7 pm // Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm
Address: Av. Álvaro Obregón 99, Roma Norte, Mexico City, Mexico
