Enriqueta Ahrensburg

Enriqueta Ahrensburg (unauthorized autobiography) I was born in Paris on March 30, 1973, though half of me already came from Venezuela and the other from a German forest I’ve yet to set foot in. At sixteen I returned to Paris —out of hunger for art, for that ancient thirst that never heals— and studied at the Académie de Port-Royal, like someone peering into the abyss with pencil and charcoal. Then I went back to Caracas and graduated from the Armando Reverón School of Fine Arts. My thesis, Pictorial Constructions In Situ, was presented at the Arturo Michelena Salon, where I received the Harry Lippins Award. Those are, let’s say, my noble titles. The rest of my résumé has unfolded inside my studio, in my inner world, among paintings, domestic rituals, and thoughts that don’t fit on a gallery label. I have exhibited, yes— in a few group shows, in a few solo ones. But the essential part has never been hung. Because my work—if it can be called that— has not merely been about making images, but about building a worldview, a language of my own that speaks from the invisible. I work with symbols and pigments, in a studio that is also a threshold, searching for the crack, the hidden sign, the form that cannot be seen with the eyes. For this world—of forms, objects, and showcases— is but a surface, a prison of five senses. And I have always been on the other side of the glass, wondering what lies beyond what they call “reality.” My work is a kind of attempt, a discontinuous writing with what has no name, a travel diary through worlds not found on maps. And if I have achieved anything, it is this: to have held onto that invisible thread, without cutting it completely, nor losing myself entirely in the noise.