Conceptual nominee

During the Second World War my grandparents built a small house in Guatemala City, with second-hand materials. It was a sweet and beautiful house that over the years has served as a home to most of my relatives at some point in their life. For me, a lonely girl in the seventies, was a wonderful place to play, with magical places, fairies and fictional characters that lived in every corner. Much of my creativity was developed in the shadow of the pines and secret hiding places of this house.

After many generations, the house is no longer in use, its inhabitants have died or have gone to make their lives elsewhere. The unstoppable time as in all, has leave its mark. I had the opportunity to say goodbye to it, before it will be demolished. By making a series of photographs to remember those magical spaces in which I have lived as a child. To fill that intangible emptiness that remains in me.

Rocio Villanueva is an Italian-Guatemalan photographer and artist based in Guatemala City. From a very early age artistic expressions have been engraved in her consciousness, through drawing, painting, photography and art appreciation with the help of her great-uncle, who introduced her by chance in this world of art.
Rocio is self-taught, for the past 7 years she has been creating surrealistic conceptual works. She uses mainly digital photography as her canvas and Photoshop intervention as the tool for her creations. Her creative process begins beyond the computer. It starts with sketches on paper that take shape through elements, time, places and characters. Her images represent parallel and dreamlike worlds that come to life through the play of light and shadow, color and textures that create a different vision of non-existent places that resemble a painting more than a photograph.
She has participated in group exhibitions in the cities of Guatemala, Barcelona, Vienna, New York, Rome, Miami and Palm Beach. And solo exhibitions in Guatemala City.