Statement

Nathalie Alfonso’s practice is rooted in movement, repetition, and memory. Alfonso creates large-scale drawings and installations that engage with the physical and conceptual layers of labor, structure, and landscape. Her work unfolds in three distinct yet interconnected stages, reflecting an evolving understanding of how bodies, systems, and environments relate to one another.

The first stage of her practice begins with the intersection of cleaning and mark-making. Drawn to the quiet intensity of repetitive gestures, Alfonso transforms actions like scrubbing into repetitive movements that generate bold charcoal line drawings—minimal in appearance but layered with the concealed trajectories of the hand. This phase, combined with her early training as a competitive speed walker in Colombia, which instilled a disciplined relationship with repetition and physical pain, focuses on control, endurance, and the traces that sustained motions left behind.

In the second stage, Alfonso shifts her attention toward construction and the figure of the builder. Alfonso is interested in architectural logic and the invisible frameworks that hold space together. Through drawing, she investigates how labor, measurement, and structural tension could be made visible. Geometry, material, and balance are essential to how her works occupy and interact with space.

In the third Stage, her focus centers on landscape to reflect on systems of interdependence and fragility. Long gravel rides through the Florida Everglades, often lasting hours, allow Alfonso to experience the land in motion. These journeys serve as a form of research, where she observes shifting light, subtle textures, and quiet transformations. Alfonso approaches drawing as a method for sensing and translating these environments. Through layered gestures, she evokes the essence of mist, erosion, water, and silence, elements that reveal the delicate balance of ecosystems.

Alfonso uses landscape as a metaphor to connect the unseen systems that sustain the natural world with the often invisible labor that supports society. Just as roots, wetlands, and microbial networks quietly hold an environment together, her work reflects the physical effort and care carried out by jobs that are frequently overlooked. These drawings serve as spaces to consider what remains hidden but necessary, whether in nature or human life.

Across each stage, Alfonso’s practice remains grounded in the body and its rhythms. Alfonso sees drawing not just as image making, but as a way to translate muscle memory, emotional control, and presence. Her large-scale wall drawings are created with soft pastel, charcoal, and graphite, applied directly to the surface. Each composition remains intended to be erased or painted over at the end of the exhibition—an act that acknowledges the fleeting nature of labor and the inevitability of repetition, even in its most invisible forms.

Her work is about visibility, not only the visibility of labor, but of the quiet marks we leave behind through care, intention, and repetition. Her drawings are not fixed images but records of presence and transformation. Through them, she invites viewers to slow down and sense the quiet strength found in what is often overlooked.