Hispanic Heritage Month: Artist Spotlight Súa Agapé

Hispanic Heritage MonthLatinx Heritage MonthArtist Spotlight

2 Oct

In celebration of #HispanicHeritageMonth this year, I’ve got another artist profile feature for you.

This time it’s focusing on the work of Súa Agapé, Guatemalan artist and illustrator.

Súa’s body of work features surrealistic illustrations with a dark cosmic flair. By employing big swathes of colour and dramatically bold, thick black lines and shapes, Súa creates work that utilizes the vast blackness of negative space to provide a contrast of light and dark to flip the imposing dread and emptiness of seemingly infinite space into something wondrous and magical. Instead of being something empty, the blackness draws the viewer’s focus in by creating a mysterious world of possibilities. Repetition in the form of dots, twinkling stars, wide eyes, and curves gives the work a spiritual and magical quality.

Súa Agapé’s work may not be traditional “horror” by genre, but it toes the line between the whimsical and the weird with its surreal storytelling method. Common themes running throughout the work include feminine iconography, indigenous symbolism, metaphysical elements, and cosmic horror visuals.

The influence of Mayan and Guatemalan culture and heritage on the art of Súa Agapé is apparent in the use of geometrics, lines, and colours. Vivid saturated magentas, violets, yellows, and greens transfer from traditional art and weaving of Guatemala, and find renewed energy and application in her contemporary illustration work. Other collections of her work employ softer, muted versions of these tones and create a wonderful visual contrast of dark, mysterious tones with an implied gentle feminine softness. There are a lot of layers the viewer can take away from these pieces, as well as just being a visual treat and a snack for your eyeballs!