In Conversation: Elisa Pinto, the "Room" of new memories in Mexican art arrives at Casa Wabi

Mexico City remains a favorite place of residence for many artists. It is home to Elisa Pinto, a Mexican artist whose work revolves around the connection between color and emotion, autobiography and self-knowledge. Today, the Casa Wabi Foundation hosts her installation, Room.

Elisa Pinto studied at the Autonomous University of Baja California, Mexico, and furthered her training with a postgraduate degree from HISK, Belgium (2019-2021). Her experimental beginnings with collage drew her closer to the natural and accessible, and this tradition of combining materials and techniques prevails in her installations today.

We spoke with Elisa Pinta about color, contemporary Mexican art, Casa Wabi, and her perspectives on art and narratives.

"Chromatic Affirmations" series. By artist Elisa Pinto. 2022. Courtesy of Elisa Pinto

It's often said that art is a reflection of the artist's soul, and then there are movements that advocate for art free of narrative beyond what we perceive visually. What premise does your work stem from? What does your artistic process tell us about Elisa?

My work has revolved around the autobiographical, physical and emotional pain, the connection between color and emotions, the creation of new memories, healing, and the spiritual.

One of my biggest steps has been getting to know myself better as an artist through producing work, exhibiting it, and getting to know other artists and their creative processes. The postgraduate degree at HISK was also an important step in my journey.

Your work contains elements of abstraction, but we could even say you began with Pop elements, mixing color with photography and newspapers. Who have been your greatest artistic influences over the years, and what inspiration have you found in them? What impacted, inspired, and connected you to them?

One of the first things I did was to intervene old medical books with colored layers, very much in the style of John Baldessari. I liked how something as simple as color could generate new interpretations .

From Mark Manders , I like the sense of nostalgia or melancholy that is perceived in his works. From Hilma af Klint, I love her creative process and how true it was to her spiritual vision. Peter Fischli and David Weiss inspire me because of how playful and loose they are in their practices; their works feel authentic, like a game. Other artists I admire and who inspire me are Alicja Kwade, Abraham Cruz Villegas, Danh Vö, Tarek Atoui, Haegue Yang, and Monika Sosnowska. I'm very interested in how they use diverse materials and how their works communicate without needing to be read as a statement. There is a power in objects that speaks for itself.

What about you and your identity, as well as the Mexican sociocultural context, reflects your work? What influences do you have from your roots, and how do you reflect them in your creations? Are there other particular contexts that have influenced you and continue to influence you?

I think my identity is very present in what I do, although not always literally. I'm interested in my work being perceived universally, not so much from a logical perspective but from a more intuitive or subconscious perspective. Color has been an important tool in achieving this.

The Mexican sociocultural context has influenced some series of works, such as Gimnasio Metafísico, where I revisited certain beliefs and rituals. Magical thinking, so prevalent in our culture, has greatly influenced my practice. For example, I've used the pendulum as a tool or guide for making technical or aesthetic decisions. Beyond that, I'd say my work isn't directly related to Mexican culture, but rather to personal experiences and more internal searches.

Your work seems to interrupt the everyday with voids and/or reliefs of applied color, in such a way that they manage to convey tenderness and closeness. What do these interruptions and penetrations of color on paper or photography evoke? What about breaking down structures through color?

I like working with color gradients because I feel they function as emotional transitions. The use of color in my work is almost always intuitive, as is the use of materials. However, I pause to think more about the meaning of the materials and how they relate to what I want to say.

I'm interested in color as a form of affection, but also as a tool that can alter or break a structure, soften it, make it more vulnerable or more alive.

How did the use of color evolve in your work? How did you get to the point where you needed to materialize it through installations, such as Habitación or Mariano Escobedo 512?

It has evolved intuitively. I believe the themes I touch on are important to me, but they're also a pretext for just doing. In Mariano Escobedo, an installation of mobile walls, I explored different materials and colors to create atmospheres linked to childhood memories . In Room, I think the color of the blinds carries more weight than the other elements, so I didn't want to overwhelm it with too many objects. The work explores the emotional attachment we place on objects and spaces, especially the bedroom as a sanctuary of emotions and memories.

"Room" installation at the Casa Wabi Foundation. By artist Elisa Pinto. 2025. Courtesy of Elisa Pinto and the Casa Wabi Foundation.

Habitación is currently hosted by Casa Wabi, one of the most important art foundations for contemporary art in Mexico, but also internationally. What does this milestone mean and represent for you? What can you tell us about Habitación?

I am very grateful to Casa Wabi and Dakin Hart for giving me the opportunity to exhibit there. It's an honor to present my work in such a special space, one that enjoys great visibility and recognition.

Room is a 2021 piece I presented in Belgium, in a very large space with white walls. From the beginning, we knew it wouldn't fit completely, so we had to rethink how to accommodate it. That limitation ended up giving the installation something special: I like how it overflows and passes through the windows, as if it needed to leave the space, to extend beyond.

I used copper pipes to draw my room in space. It speaks to the emotional charge we project onto the objects and spaces we inhabit. For me, the bedroom is the most intimate place in a home, a space that holds emotions, memories, and bonds.

The different elements refer to the emotional content of objects, people, and relationships, their presence and absence. There's one detail that sometimes goes unnoticed: a yarn thread that runs through the blinds. I took that yarn from a blanket my mother knitted and gave me. Later, I realized that the thread resembled an umbilical cord, which gave the piece a new meaning: it speaks of maternal care, of the connection with one's mother, and how that bond remains present, even in the most everyday things.

From your perspective as an artist, but also as an observer, how do you intercept color? Over the years, what have you observed about what happens when color challenges us? Do you think it has the ability to change the way we see and inhabit the world?

From my perspective, color has a very direct yet subtle way of intercepting. Sometimes it enters without asking permission, like a sensation that passes through the eyes and reaches the body before we can put it into words.

Over the years, I've noticed that color speaks to us in very different ways, depending on the moment, our emotional state, or the cultural context in which we view it. Sometimes it can generate comfort, other times discomfort or even energy. I think color has a kind of language of its own that we don't always understand rationally, but that affects us nonetheless.

Yes, I believe that color can change the way we see and inhabit the world. Not only because of its symbolic or cultural significance, but because of the sensory experience it generates. It can make a space more friendly, an image more powerful, an object more relatable. In my work, I use it as a way to open up possibilities , to provoke small alterations that invite us to look differently or feel differently.

"Desires" series. By artist Elisa Pinto. Courtesy of Elisa Pinto

If we talk about you as Elisa Pinto, a Mexican artist, what does it mean to grow and develop as a female artist in Mexico?

It represents an opportunity, but also a challenge. I've noticed that in contemporary art, when we speak from the emotional, intuitive, or spiritual, it's not always taken seriously. There's still a certain resistance or prejudice toward that kind of language.

Still, I've seen a change. More and more artists, curators, and audiences are interested in exploring the sensitive, the invisible, everything linked to the body and emotion. For me, developing as an artist in this context has also been a process of trusting my voice, the way I want to approach art, even if it doesn't always fit within certain circles.

Being a female artist in Mexico is also an act of persistence and intuition: continuing to create from what moves you, even if it's not the easiest thing to explain or justify.

How do you see the evolution of contemporary Mexican art? What is its legacy and what are the prospects for art in the country? How do you think it's evolving?

I see contemporary Mexican art as being in a very active and diverse moment. There are so many voices working from different perspectives, and that makes it very rich. I find it interesting how it has stopped focusing solely on large centers like Mexico City, and now there are also valuable practices in other parts of the country, more connected to local contexts, with different narratives and different ways of producing.

I feel that one of the strongest legacies of contemporary art in Mexico is its ability to adapt and reinvent itself from a place of precariousness, from a place of collectivity and from the emotional.

Regarding perspectives, I think we're at a time when many structures are being questioned: exhibition models, validation systems, hierarchies between disciplines. I think there's a growing interest in the sensorial, the ritual, the emotional, the collaborative, and gender diversity. Personally, I'm very interested in this opening toward more intuitive languages, which also include silence, pause, the spiritual, and the invisible. It seems to me that contemporary Mexican art is in a process of expansion, where there's room for many ways of seeing and inhabiting the world.

A color?

Light pink.