HOPE
PROJECT: Personal Commission
CLIENT: Maria Viviana Alvarez
YEAR: 2021
Hope is a richly layered allegorical composition that reflects on transition, responsibility, and the promise of collective renewal. At its center, the work presents new generations of women who are able to raise their voices and inhabit space in the world, a possibility shaped in part by the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Her presence is depicted as an active force of change: she gestures a white hand out of the frame, signaling a necessary shift in which dominant narratives step aside so that other cultures, races, and genders may speak for themselves and shine without being spoken for.
Behind the figures, a forest in flames evokes the environmental catastrophes witnessed in Australia, the Amazon, and California, underscoring the fragility of nature and its urgent call for care and respect. Symbolism permeates the scene: the sun, moon, and crown above the three women represent illumination, cyclical time, feminine power, sovereignty, and resilience. In the distance, a white horse and a black horse embody both the duality of the human condition and the hopeful vision of coexistence beyond racism and hatred. To the right, a nude figure of Eve wearing a face mask reclines against a tree, referencing the pandemic and the collective reckoning with vulnerability, mortality, bodily acceptance, and reconnection with nature.
Hidden among foliage, the sculpted head of Venus recalls the balance of feminine and masculine energies, self-love, and self-knowledge. In the foreground, an outstretched hand offers a compass-shaped talisman to future generations as an invitation to seek new directions, values, and ways of living. A small wooden crocodile rests in the grass as a symbol of wisdom and the guardian of ancient knowledge. Bathed in warm orange tones reminiscent of sunset, the painting conveys a sense of awakening and transformation, echoing totemic and Indigenous aesthetics that honor the land and envision a freer, more harmonious existence where each new day carries the possibility of transcendence.