Write your self. Your body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth.

(Hélène Cixous, The laugh of the Medusa [1976])

To enter Cristina de Miguel’s exhibition is to follow a line that thinks as it moves. Swift strokes of pastel figure themselves out across the paper, each mark a movement of discovery towards an image still unknown. These drawings remain unshielded from the hesitation, speed, or doubt of their creation. They are exposed, bare, vulnerable. Everything stays in play; nothing is erased or polished. They are scenes of negotiation, quivering on the edge of completion.

The search of creation is never hidden in de Miguel’s drawings. They are a collection of deviations laid bare – movements not obscured but featured. Each line exists as itself; each smudge or tear in the paper, remains visible. The idea of colouring inside the lines becomes an absurd concept, rejected by a deep blue stroke penetrating the dark contour of a face. Structures and ideals shatter as the lines follow the emotions of the hand, on its hasty search for visual expression.

Through distortion and fragmentation, de Miguel’s bodies emerge as assemblages of affects. Limbs flicker into existence from a cloud of cacophonous lines. A face formed in smudged contours rests directly atop a pair of legs, or protrude paws, or floats alone in a green haze. These bodies misbehave. They embody something queer in their refusal of composure. Unruly, they resist form and sidestep recognition.