Through her deeply personal artworks in The Shadow That Follows Me, Chilean émigré Ms Paula Quintela offers a perspective which is unique yet highly relatable.

The fortunate among the readers might recall sheltering in the folds of a mother’s skirt or conquests within the confines of a backyard.

Ms Quintela explained, “…because my house here has a beautiful garden and I spend so much time outside because it makes me happy.

“So, I start to think about this garden where I grew up.

“… I started to make these, but there’s always something dark – even when my forests are colorful and joyful,” said Ms Quintela.

The twelve landscapes in her solo exhibition at Brisbane’s Onespace Gallery are as complex in their physical construction as the concepts they convey.

She begins by applying ground to aluminum plates, onto which she draws directly before etching them in a copper sulphate solution.

These are printed onto dress “pattern paper”, which is simultaneously chine collér onto “archival paper”.

“…and I start painting,” Ms Quintela said.

“I paint with everything… watercolours, acrylic pencils, markers… I never know what I’m going to need… Sometimes I need something really mat and [at other times] transparent,” said Ms Quintela.

She developed her comprehensive range of artistic skills through studying in both Canada and Chile.

In Montreal, she was mentored in printmaking by Jean-Pierre Sauvé at Atelier Circulaire.

She undertook her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Universidad de Chile, which was “really conceptual and really political for obvious reasons”.

Yet, conversely, the students were also rigorously schooled in “academic drawing and academic painting… really like the Renaissance.”

However, after she “free[d] [her]self from all of those voices of professors and the university” she “found [her] own language” which was drawn from “magical realism”.

“All of the very old books that smell delicious… those worlds that are not what they look like… illustrations for kids,” said Ms Quintela.

Being “six or seven” at the time of the coup d’état, Ms Quintela recounts the contrasting experiences of Chileans in the ensuing era.

She attributes the “bubble” some residents existed within to “full control over newspapers, radio, and TV”.

Yet, at that tender age, she could “see and feel the changes”.

General Augusto Pinochet led a military dictatorship between 1973 and 1990, brutally imposing liberal policies over a socialist majority with the support of the United States.

Over 21,000 of its citizens sought refuge in Australia during the regime, resulting in the establishment of a robust Chilean community in Melbourne.

Ms Quintela and her middle-class family persisted despite the disappearance of friends, with her marriage to a Canadian ex-patriot of Chile catalyzing her emigration.

She has since immigrated to Australia and is presently working as a full-time artist while raising two daughters.

Apart from the ethereal environments depicted in her works-on-paper, some of her mythical menagerie have manifested as a set of sculptures.

In a process sympathetic to the chine collé compositions, the figures which “look like this animal but are not” feature found objects, like faux-feathers, embedded into their pitch-black matte surfaces.

For Ms Quintela, these anamorphic avatars reflect her feelings of “being an immigrant and never fitting in” and “having to deal with the expectations of society”.

However, she insists that her expressions of self are exclusive of political intent.

“It’s totally my happy place,” Ms Quintela said.

“It’s my way of dealing with my own ghosts, my own devils.

“[but] I let people look with their own history, memory – because everyone sees things differently depending on what [their] experiences are… and I find that fascinating,” said Ms Quintela.

The Shadow That Follows Me can be experienced at Onespace Gallery in Meanjin (Brisbane) until 14 June 2025.

By Pamela See