“What is creation? What is the origin of creation?” While preparing for this exhibition, Isabel Garfias Montero posed this question for herself and kept thinking how to let Hong Kong people know more about her lifestyle, mode of thinking, and even the way of eating. Isabel hopes to taste the chili and spice from her homeland and display a variety of her country food on canvas for viewers to experience the sensation of tastes through the eyes.
In this series of oil paintings, Isabel generously gives audience an intra-sensory experience, to ‘taste with the eyes, see with the tongue’ with a feast to the eyes. The red-hot background filled up with orange, white and green patches and crisscrossing black lines, makes an exciting combination of colors. The neat arrangement creates a harmony of composition. Audience can be deeply entertained by the interesting details in each bit and piece of Isabel’s country food. Not only are there various kinds of chilies and spices, but also pasta, roasted peanuts, and other Mexican and Latin American specialties, such as salsa, pozole, Picadillo, Capirotada, etc. Viewers can share the painter’s joy in food and her celebration of life through the abundance of ingredients, bursting out energies from within. In a deeper sense, Isabel is paying a tribute to her home country Mexico which is famous for chili. Seeming to have inherited a sort of ‘chili’ character, the passionate and profound Mexicans are at once so sweet, so spicy and even a little bitter.
Isabel Garfias Montero was born in 1970. She held a degree of graphic design and completed her Arts education in Mexico and Italy, which shares a similar Latino background and culture with her home country. Since 1996, her work has appeared in a number of public collections as well as exhibitions, both solo and collective, in Mexico, Italy, and France.