Architect, Claudia Lavegas is also a painter. Frescoes, hats, scarves, porcelain… She has worked for important collectors in Caracas, Madrid, New York, Paris, Santo Domingo.

Far from proposing strict mathematical geometry, this accomplished multidisciplinary artist invents a way that is as intuitive as it is thoughtful to approach the question of origins, roots, and links between Nature and human beings. Her work must be understood as an architectural, environmental and spiritual manifesto.

So, since she discovered the village of Mayupa in the Amazon in 2017, she has been painting “Churuatas”, the name given to the indigenous huts of this village.

“I went into one of these huts,” she explains. “I felt like I was entering a wooden cathedral. I looked at the roof for a long time, seen from below first, then from above. I found this round architecture fascinating in its beauty and intelligence. The Circle, the most widespread symbol in Nature, is one of the first shapes drawn by humans. It has neither beginning nor end; which makes it a universal symbol of eternity, perfection, divinity, infinity…” Claudia’s “churuatas” are made with acrylic on canvas, and patiently filled with extra lines to emphasize their structure.

Often copper, gold or silver in color, these churuatas refer to the vast mining resources exploited in the country (gold, bauxite, iron, nickel, coal, diamonds). Concerned about the devastation caused by these gold mining operations, she is also interested in landscape architecture and “sacred” mountains. As if driven by an urgency to leave a trace, the artist reproduces his landscapes on large sections of canvas. Like a surgeon, she obsessively lays down hundreds and hundreds of freehand lines, like so many furrows of mineral colors, often dark, sometimes highlighted with a blood red evocative of the color of the water in this region.