The mountains are always there. They are always with me...

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Recuerdos de Los Andes (Memories of the Andes) explores themes of loss, displacement, identity, and memory. Born in Guayaquil, Diana Mercado left her home in Ecuador as a child and immigrated to the United States. Her body of work evolved from childhood memories and a desire to recapture those early days of living in a paradise of overwhelming beauty. Dreamlike, imbued with a sense of nostalgia and childlike wonder, her paintings evoke the beauty of the soaring Andes, the ethereal landscapes of Ecuador, the flickering lights of Quito, and the chagra, Ecuador’s traditional cowboy, disappearing into the ghostly horizon.

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She is profoundly interested in the experience of leaving one’s homeland – the loss of identity and the struggle to assimilate in a foreign country as an ‘alien’. With melancholy and warmth, her paintings speak to her feelings of grief following her separation from Ecuador. Young women appear, working tirelessly at their sewing machines, riding the subways, or dreaming of the mountains, while mothers and children arrive in the great metropolis of New York or reach for the comfort of soft toys that drift through water and abstract skies. These paintings attempt to redefine the definition of immigrants as ‘aliens’, so they are instead understood as mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons — human beings.

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The paintings were created through a rhythmic application of thin layers of paint that echoes the process of leaving one’s home for another country. In the same way, the textural effects of glaze and scumbling conjure a sense of the passage of time. Subtle variations of colour and light suggest the gauziness of memories as they blur and dissolve into the past.