WHAT INTERESTED YOU ABOUT COLLABORATING WITH 4BYSIX AND THE IDEA OF GIVING NEW LIFE TO DISCARDED MATERIALS THROUGH ART THAT SUPPORTS COMMUNITY AND COMPASSION?

Artistic creation, for me, is deeply connected to healing, learning, and returning something to the community. My project is about humanising what we’ve learned to discard - not only objects, but

people. Society loves to categorise things as “good” or “bad,” “useful” or “broken.” But nobody is one single thing. We all come from circumstances. 

I see this obsession with discarding as part of a larger problem, a kind of “liquid love,” as Bauman described it, where we jump to the next thing without really understanding what’s in front of us. We consume people, ideas, even ourselves, like disposable objects. To re-signify something to find beauty and meaning in what no longer serves its original purpose, that’s a lesson we need everywhere, not just in art. 

This collaboration felt like an act of compassion, both towards materials and towards the human condition. It’s about reminding ourselves that nothing, and no one, is ever truly wasted. 

MUCH OF YOUR WORK EXPLORES SLEEP AS A STATE OF TRUTH AND RESISTANCE. WHAT FIRST DREW YOU TO THIS IDEA OF REST AS BOTH PERSONAL AND POLITICAL?

Everything began from something very personal, as it does for most artists - even if, later on, what keeps you there is how it connects with the public and the social. 

I grew up moving a lot: new schools, new cities, new groups all the time. That made me hyperaware, from a very young age, of the first impression I gave. I was always the outsider trying to be accepted into a system that already worked without me. For a child, belonging is survival and in a way, it still is for adults. 

So I learned early on to ask myself: Who do I have to be so that others will accept me? That question became a kind of silent engine that shaped my identity. Over time, it turned into an alter ego, a version of “Inés” that kept evolving and perfecting itself, until one day I realised I was living a life that looked desirable from the outside, but felt deeply wrong inside. 

Through therapy, and slowly through painting, I began to understand that the person I had built was mostly made of what others expected of me, not of what made me happy. I had created a kind of product, always improving, more aesthetic, more intellectual, with a tone and a look carefully adjusted to please. But that constant reforming didn’t leave any space for real decisions - or for joy. I didn’t even know what I wanted, because I had no real sense of “me.” 

At some point, I realized that during sleep - precisely because I couldn’t choose to be anyone or anything else I could finally find a kind of refuge. It was the only time I wasn’t performing, when I was simply being. There was something profoundly healing about that. When we sleep, we’re all equal. We lose our status, our masks, our categories. There’s no “good” or “bad,” no “beautiful” or “ugly.” Just vulnerability. It’s almost impossible not to feel compassion for someone asleep. 

That’s where I started from. I wanted to paint that state, the purest version of the other and then, through showing those paintings, to create a space where viewers could experience a kind of radical tenderness. A tenderness for others, but also for themselves. In a world that keeps us constantly running, producing, and performing, sleep feels like the last sacred space where we can simply exist. 

YOU OFTEN DESCRIBE YOUR PAINTINGS AS MOMENTS WHERE THE “PERFORMANCE OF THE SELF” DISSOLVES. WHAT DOES THAT IDEA MEAN TO YOU PERSONALLY, AND HOW HAS IT EVOLVED OVER TIME?

At the beginning, when I started painting, I didn’t consciously decide to paint sleeping people. It just happened. What I did know was that I wanted to paint something that made me feel good. I came from a very different field, I used to work in social media and content creation, changing my career at an age when I already had a “stable” path was terrifying. The art world can be uncertain, and I didn’t have a safety net. So if I was going to risk everything, I wanted to do it through something that healed me instead of exhausting me. 

I’ve always admired Sorolla - that way of painting light and life without needing darkness to make it beautiful. So I started painting what gave me peace: people resting, existing quietly. I’ve also suffered from insomnia all my life, so sleep has always been a personal obsession. I think I was searching for the least corroded version of the self, the one that doesn’t have to lie, inflate, or shrink depending on who’s around. The one that simply is.

Each sleeping figure I painted helped me to rebuild that sense of authenticity. Every cycle of sleep, and every painting, was like a small return to the origin, a training in how to be less shaped by the outside world. It’s not about rejecting society; it’s about finding balance, about learning who you are when nobody’s watching. 

As When You Sleep evolved, I started realizing that embracing the vulnerability of others was easier than embracing my own. Painting others was a form of compassion; painting myself was confrontation. So I began that next step, depicting my own sleep, my own quiet. And as I shared the work, I realised that 

what I thought was an individual wound was actually collective. The pressure to turn ourselves into products, to sell a narrative of success or desirability, it affects everyone, just in different ways. 

Now, When You Sleep isn’t just my story. It’s a mirror. It belongs to anyone who feels tired of performing, and who wants to find a softer, truer way of being. 

YOUR FIGURES OFTEN APPEAR SUSPENDED BETWEEN WAKEFULNESS AND SURRENDER. HOW DO YOU APPROACH CAPTURING THAT FRAGILE, ALMOST SACRED IN-BETWEEN STATE?

I try to paint without judgment. Consciousness can sometimes separate us from instinct, so painting for me is a way to reconnect with that raw sensitivity, to feel instead of rationalise. That’s part of my own healing process, but it’s also part of the concept itself: allowing things to be without needing to define or justify them. 

When I paint, I look for the moment when the body lets go, the tilt of a head, the softness of the hands, the way the mouth loses tension. Those gestures say everything. I often leave parts of the canvas unfinished, visible pencil lines, raw textures. It’s important for me that the image feels open, like it could still change as if it’s hovering between waking and sleeping. That tension between the refined and the undone mirrors the same tension we live with inside: peace surrounded by chaos. 

YOU RECENTLY CREATED A PIECE ON ONE OF 4BYSIX’S UPCYCLED CANVASES. HOW DID WORKING ON A RECLAIMED SURFACE CONNECT WITH YOUR IDEAS OF STILLNESS, HEALING, AND TRANSFORMATION?

It felt very aligned, actually. Recently I’ve been experimenting with new materials, different fabrics, wood, resins, even turning mattresses or bedsheets into sculptural pieces to paint on. Working on a reclaimed surface connects directly with the idea of pausing, rethinking, and starting again with what’s already there. 

As adults, we tend to lose that curiosity, we get attached to what we already know, to our methods, our paths. We forget how to stop and rediscover. So this process was a reminder to play, to experiment, to give myself the luxury of not knowing. That’s something I try to protect in my studio, to stay open to surprise, to transformation.

YOUR PAINTINGS INVITE VIEWERS TO SLOW DOWN AND FIND QUIET HONESTY. IN A WORLD THAT CONSTANTLY PUSHES FOR PRODUCTIVITY, HOW DO YOU PROTECT OR NURTURE THAT SENSE OF PAUSE IN YOUR OWN LIFE?

Honestly, I think about it more than I actually manage to do it. I still struggle with rest. I’m not completely free from the belief that I have to be “doing” to be worthy, to fix everything, to make everyone proud, to stay relevant. But I’m learning. 

Spending most of my days alone painting already feels like a small act of resistance. I’m learning to protect my energy, to stop feeling guilty for not being there for everyone all the time, or what I choose to do when resting, not everything has to be productive, I give myself permission to not read difficult essays or to not watch 3hrs long films if I don’t feel like doing so during my not working hours now. That’s hard to internalise when ambition has been tied for so long to survival. But little by little, I’m redirecting that ambition, not towards feeding the system, but towards feeding my own dreams. 

YOU’VE SPOKEN ABOUT STEPPING AWAY FROM THE DIGITAL WORLD TO FIND REFUGE IN PAINTING. HOW HAS THAT SHIFT CHANGED YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOURSELF AND YOUR WORK?

It made me question what it really means to be a woman. For years, I felt that being perceived as desirable was the same as being valuable, because that’s what I unconsciously learned growing up. Stepping away from that constant gaze, from the demand to please, was incredibly liberating. 

It allowed me to exist beyond the idea of being a product. To realise that I could be something more complex, more imperfect, and still worthy of love. Painting gave me a space where I didn’t have to perform femininity, I could just be. And even though my work is still very personal, the focus shifted: from being looked at, to looking inward.

THERE’S A DEEP TENDERNESS IN HOW YOU PAINT THE BODY - UNFINISHED, VULNERABLE, YET WHOLE. HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN A PAINTING HAS REACHED THE POINT OF SAYING ENOUGH?

I’ve realised over time that you never really know. Trying to know is a way of trying to be perfect, and that’s not the point. There are paintings I wish I had left looser and others I wish I had pushed further. Some come together in a day, full of spontaneity and joy; others take weeks and feel like a quiet act of endurance.

Each one reflects an emotional state, they’re like diary entries. I don’t paint seven at once; I need to live inside each one until it empties itself. I think a painting is finished when it has absorbed everything it needed to, all the emotion, all the honesty and when what’s left to say belongs to the next one. 

YOUR ONGOING PROJECT WHEN YOU SLEEP CONTINUES TO EVOLVE AND RESONATE. HOW DO YOU SEE IT GROWING IN THE COMING YEARS, AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU TODAY?

I often say that figurative painting is just one language among many. The goal isn’t the language, it’s the message. Some people understand and connect more with plays or with abstract paintings, or with poetry, and a way to make that message transcend even more is to be able to translate it to as many languages as possible. 

Right now, I’m working with resin and soft materials: mattresses, fabrics and I’m curious to explore sculpture, ceramics, even performance. Maybe painting will keep being my main language, or maybe not. What matters is that the search continues. 

When You Sleep started as something I needed to heal from, but now it’s become an ongoing study of the self, not just mine, but everyone’s. I don’t know when I will feel like this study is complete, probably never, I imagine myself returning to it throughout my life, to see how the concept of “self” evolves through different stages of existence. Because ultimately, sleep isn’t an ending in my work - it’s a threshold.

AND FINALLY, HOW IS LIFE FOR YOU RIGHT NOW? WHAT HAS BEEN GROUNDING OR INSPIRING YOU BEYOND THE STUDIO AND THE CANVAS?

Honestly, the resilience of people. The way humans manage to rebuild after fear or crisis - it’s both heartbreaking and beautiful. That duality, that mix of despair and hope, feels like life itself.