“Somos Animales Poéticos” Weaves Nature, Memory in Photographs

With the deft fingers of a skilled weaver, photographer Cristina Velásquez spins stories from captured images and archival materials, anchored by textiles and rich textures. “Somos Animales Poéticos,” her exhibit now on display at the Dougherty Arts Center’s Julia C. Butridge Gallery, features works from her recent book by the same name, released via Dusk Collective in May. Surrounded by lush floral patterns, the images – all untitled and fluidly presented – subvert colonial portraiture and traditional documentarian photography to draw instead on trickier symbols of identity and poetic connections between land, flora and fauna, and people. 

Immediately to the left of the gallery door, a young face peers between thin woven fronds, lightly graffitied with scrawling hearts. The brown eyes are stoic, uninviting, as if caught in defiant observation. Immediately next to the single shot is a triptych of sorts: a nature shot is interrupted by a sepia-toned reinterpretation of the jungle that seems to be cleanly cut from wallpaper. This scene is spliced again by a photo of a man walking away from the viewer, carrying a tropical-print patio chair above his head, which connects frame-to-frame with an image of two feet with bunches of bananas where one might expect shoes to be. The installation style mirrors the book’s formatting, placing images together as if part of a spread, bringing their colors and patterns into conversation wordlessly. Layered natural imagery makes the firmly yielding structure of the intertwined leaves and the thickly woven wallpaper palpable even in two dimensions. 

Born in Colombia, the now-Austin-based artist traces threads of memory and embodiment through vibrant palettes and close-up images that pique the imagination. Her subjects’ faces, if visible at all, are always obscured, whether by the angle, the body, or fabric. The camera’s gaze lingers instead on their tattoos and crisp haircuts seen from behind, their shaved legs and painted toenails, or the intricate lines and bandaged fingers of a pen-marked hand. Viewers instead draw conclusions about identity and narrative from the context of other bodies and objects: hairier legs tangled with the clean-shaven ones, for instance, and a shot of cut fruit on a merchant counter next to the ink-stained palm. 

Archival photos also appear in the collection, visages similarly removed. In this instance, animal pictures from a Fifties informational anthology cover their heads, harkening to the collection’s name, “Somos Animales Poéticos,” or “We Are All Poetic Animals.” Even without telltale signs of hair or makeup, clothing – shoulder-padded sleeves, gingham dresses with plush iron-on patches – dates the photos to earlier decades, and their backdrops of wallpapered rooms or rich bedspreads evoke intimate settings. Though their tone is different and the collage elements are amplified in these compositions, they fit seamlessly into the collection’s approach, combining rose-hued shots of patios and family scenes with crisp images of ocean and cattle on the beach. An attention to repeating forms and moments of bodily connection – clasping hands, cradled babies – creates a dreamlike sense of intangible knowing that washes through the contemporary photographs as well.

Velásquez’s exploration of woven materials extends beyond photographed textiles into several three-dimensional works also on display, all constructed from paper or cardboard. In one precisely woven panel, close-up images of a dirt-clogged sneaker reappear, folding into each other in a chevron pattern. A similar work mimics the two hands of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, each extended palm repeated several times before the final contact is made. Two delicately woven white paper works stand in contrast to the deep hues of the other pieces, their geometric shapes and care for detail highlighting the intricacy of the other compositions through their stark simplicity. 

Whether woven of plastic or cotton, leaves or paper, strands are made into a whole again and again in these works. The colors and nature associated with Latin America evoke specific identity touchpoints, but the feeling delivered through the collection’s eye for texture and focus on isolated features speaks to a universal desire to tell stories with feeling. People, their natural surroundings, and their chosen accoutrements are made into a sum larger than their parts through their cohesion and connection, whether captured in a single image or delivered through collage.  

This article appears in August 28 • 2026.