Ana María Velasco: A Still Life

As part of Clubhouse’s ongoing salon series, Ana María Velasco: A Still Life extends the tradition of still life beyond representation and into lived space. Working across ceramics and drawing, Ana María Velasco positions nature not as a passive subject, but as an active and interdependent force.

The exhibition unfolds as a constructed ecosystem. Ceramic figures—bats, an iguana, an alligator—emerge from mounds of real soil, surrounded by living plants and ripening tropical fruit. Green bananas, citrus, and orchids are not props but participants: they bloom, decay, and shift over time. The installation resists the fixed image of the still life, instead proposing a temporal, breathing composition in which life cycles remain visible.

Velasco’s ceramics oscillate between tenderness and estrangement. Animals appear watchful, suspended, or quietly animate, suggesting a world in which human and nonhuman hierarchies dissolve. Two works on paper extend this terrain into imagined landscapes, positioning the gallery as a threshold between the composed and the living.