Claudia Kaatziza Cortinez

BOSQUE DE SAL
An artistic and material exploration of Villa Epecuén, a lakeside town in Argentinasubmerged by a flood in 1985. For years it lay beneath a hypersaline lake, its structuresslowly dissolving in mineral-rich water. Decades later, the town resurfaced—crystallizedby salt and time. This project traces what endures through processes of decay,mineralization, and resilience—gathering residues, observing corrosion, and composinga visual and material essay on transformation and the fragile memory of builtenvironments.The images are gum prints, a 19th-century photographic process and the first toproduce color. Pigments—or pigment-bearing materials—are mixed with gum arabicand a light-sensitive solution. After UV exposure, the gum hardens; the print is thendeveloped slowly in water, softening the surface and gradually revealing the image. It isa tactile, time-based process shaped by light, dissolution, and emergence.This series focuses on the trees that remain—twisted, salt-bleached trunks reduced tognarled textures. Each image is printed with pigments derived from materials native tothe region, including cochineal, mollisol soil, and quebracho bark. These deep colorsstand in contrast to the present landscape, reimagining the trees as vivid, spectralfigures—saturated with hues rooted in their surroundings.

Gumprints using various earth-based pigments, gum arabic, diazoVariable dimensions, 2015

Claudia Kaatziza Cortínez is an Argentine/Chilean/American visual artist currently based in NYC. She received her BFA from RISD and MFA from Yale. Her work often begins with a camera as a drawing tool, exploring cities and landscapes to find surfaces, patterns, and other particularities that she transforms back in the studio. Central to her practice is experimenting with materials like paper pulp, handmade pigments, and light-sensitive chemistry to create photograms, rubbings, and architectural casts that evoke past or imagined landscapes. These processes merge photography, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture, often incorporating text from an archive of her father's poetry and collaborations with her niece, also a poet. She also creates large-scale installations that replicate the original scale of a site, weaving personal, familial, and location-specific narratives. Through these projects, she explores how objects and textures communicate deeper stories about home, identity, and memory. Recent awards and residencies include: Yale Norfolk Teaching Fellowship, Silver Art Projects Residency, Rema Hort Mann Grant, Center for Book Arts Residency, LES Printshop Residency, LMCC Community Engagement Grant, among others. She is currently an artist in residence at the Manhattan Graphic Center, at Powerhouse Arts

www.claudiakcortinez.com
@kaatziza