Opening Event: Paula Quintela | The Shadow That Follows Me

Exhibition Dates: 16 May - 14 June 2025
Exhibition Opening: Saturday 17 May 2025, 5 -7pm 
Where: Onespace gallery, 25A Bouquet Street South Brisbane Q 4101 

Onespace invites you to the opening of The Shadow That Follows Me by Paula Quintela, exhibiting in the Main and Lounge gallery. The Shadow That Follows Me, features a new body of work by Quintela that extends upon her existing practice. Drawing from her early childhood memories in Chile, a country ruled at the time by dictatorship, she vividly recalls long and difficult years of hardship that have vehemently shaped her artistic practice today. Quintela’s new works beautifully transform her reflections on her childhood and desire to express her experience of diaspora into a world of fantasy, imagination, exploration and, wonder. The Shadow That Follows Me comprises an enthralling series of mixed-media works on paper, together with several new sculptures that draw upon on her two-dimensional motifs, bringing these unique characters to life. 

Essay writer Cassandra Lehman states, “Quintela's sculptural pieces are presented as posed specimens, conjured from her imagination, and are offered as previously undiscovered species, so insignificant and dark that, by hiding in the shadows, they have avoided detection and classification, until now. Charmingly grotesque, submissive and vulnerable, these creatures have familiar features and hybrid qualities that lie somewhere in between the factual and the fantastic.” 

Image: Courtesy of the artist and Onespace.