Teresa Villaseñor | Mexican Artist in Amsterdam

The Mexican Death (2024)

80 cms x 60 cms

Acrylic on canvas

This is a Tzompantli, according to the Mexica (Aztec) tradition. It is just a wall made for exhibition with the skulls of people who died in battle or similar. But this is a sugar tzompantli. I come from a city where they take Dia De Muertos (Day of the Dead) very seriously, and every year they make a festival with a huge market where they sell a lot of chocolate and sugar skulls. With this painting I wanted to show how we take death so lightly, we joke around and make fun of it, but it still affects us. It has 32 skulls, one for each state in Mexico. On their foreheads, it’s the name of everything that is killing Mexico: ecocide, inequality, violence (at the centre), poverty, narco, capitalism, climate change, exploitation, feminicide and corruption.

I find hurting and dying but at the same time smiling and being colourful and joking around is a very Mexican thing to do.

With Everything (2024)

40 cms x 40 cms

Acrylic on canvas

I thought I have been very serious with my paintings so for this piece it was enough seriousness. This is my favourite type of tacos: al pastor, with everything. When you go to a Mexican taqueria they ask you “Con todo?”, meaning, if you want cilantro, onion and pineapple with your tacos al pastor. They always give you some lemon as well. It has hibiscus (Jamaica) flavoured water, as well as green salsa. Some people prefer red salsa with their tacos, the green salsa. was a pure aesthetic decision. The plate sits on a very common and colourful mantel cloth.

After I finished this piece I went to Mexico to visit family. After some hours getting lost, my family surprised me with exactly this painting on the table, with the same cloth and green salsa. Almost the exact same image. I don’t believe in manifesting things, but this made me doubt.

It took me two months and a half to make, just because I decided to make my life difficult by making the cloth. People said that my technique looked like textiles, and this was the first time I paint an elaborate textile.

Bugambilias (2024)

50 cms x 40 cms

Acrylic on canvas

I was (am) missing my family back in Mexico. My big family, on my father’s side, have a huge house in a city called Cuernavaca, where they have bougainvillea everywhere. I always associated my family’s warmth with those flowers, and with that city.

This painting is a continuation of the flower series, it’s made with the same style. The one on this painting is how I remember the flowers. I tried to avoid references, and to paint them by memory to see what the differences are. I will probably do it again, now having seen real bougainvillea and having fresher references.

This painting took around three months to finish.

Sera Ley (2020)

50x 40 cms

Acrylic and gouache on canvas

This is the first painting I made since moving to Amsterdam when I started experimenting with this technique. Sera Ley is the most symbolic painting I’ve done, and all of the items are related to feminism. This is based on the Wixarika culture’s art. The Wixarika community are an indigenous group in Mexico, famous for their use of colours and beaded art. They have the legend of the blue deer, a male god that brought corn to humanity. I wanted to make a reference on this by painting in the centre a green hare, as green is the colour of Latin America’s pro-choice movement. It has three pink and purple flowers inside, as a reference to the suffragette movement in Europe and the three waves of feminism.

On the upper left are nine pink crosses, referencing the feminicides in Mexico, particularly on the border with the US. When a woman dies by feminicide, the grieving families bring up a pink cross. There are mountains of them in some parts of my country. The hare is burning at it, as women on the protest we yell “We’ll burn the patriarchy”. Underneath it, there are two snakes. There is a Mexica Goddess which I am obsessed about, called Coatlicue. She’s the goddess of transformation, and instead of a head, she has two snakes looking at each other. These two are a reference to her.

Underneath the deer, there is a half-moon, like the one the Virgin of Guadalupe has underneath her feet. It’s surrounded by cacti and desert flowers. On the upper right, there is a fertilized egg as the sun, because pro-life people are not against life, but chosen life. Under it, there’s a corn plant, as some cultures believe it’s a gift from Mother Earth.

This painting took around 3 months to be finished, as I was just experimenting with the technique. This is one of the only two paintings where I used the back of a brush to paint.

This painting is a bit problematic to me. It is too close to the Wixarika culture, and I find difficulty with the fact of having a piece where I took the culture’s religion and turned it into an opinion on a contemporary subject.

Proud City (2023)

70 cms x 50 cms

Acrylic on canvas

I wanted to paint a particular bridge around my neighbourhood, but I struggled with the colours. I have always lived in places where it is typical to have houses painted in very bright colours (you can google Metepec or Puebla if you want to see some examples). So I found Amsterdam a bit too grey in comparison. It was spring when I was deciding on the colours of the houses, and that’s when I started seeing promos for Amsterdam’s Canal Pride Parade. I had already started with the first purple and blue house, so that’s when I decided to use the pride flag colours. I am proud of living in a city that accepts all kinds of people and celebrates diversity. I hope it always stays the same.

This painting took around six months. I started getting better with my pace, and also around this time I discovered that people actually liked my paintings, so I started to take them a bit more seriously.

Marigolds (2023)

50 cms x 40 cms

Acrylic on canvas

Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) is my favourite celebration of the year, I love it. Part of the tradition is to make an altar in your house for your loved ones so that they have a place to visit during the day of the dead. But because of my space limitations, I couldn’t make an altar for my father.

Marigolds (or Cempasuchil, in Spanish/Nahuatl) are a main element of a Dia de Muertos altar, as the spirits of the dead follow the light from the marigolds to find their own altars. We also call altars “offers”, so this would be an offer to my father’s spirit. I don’t have the space to make an altar for my dead loved ones, but I’ll have marigolds so they can find me and keep me company.

This painting took me around three months to make. I decided this would be the first one of a series of paintings of flowers. This is the first one I started painting with pottery tools and using more gold painting. I tried to use a lot of thick paint, so it would have a lot of texture and make it look a bit 3D.

Tela de Coatlicue (2024)

40 cms x 40 cms

Acrylic on canvas

I am very interested with Coatlicue, the Mexican goddess of transformation and change. A literal translation of her name is “skirt made of snakes”, so I tried to see how her dress would look like. It is quite funny that I am so attracted to her, when I am extremely scared of snakes. I will probably work more with references to this Aztec deity.

With this painting, I tried to focus on the technique. It took 7 weeks to make.

Housing Crisis (2024)

65 cms x 57 cms

Acrylic on canvas

As you can see, I live in a tiny house without enough space, and I think about the housing crisis quite often. So I made small houses, filled with people that can barely fit. Some of them have enough space, and some of them do not. Some of them have to share space with people, some of them don’t. But some of them don’t have a house of their own (shown in the upper right corner) and can’t have their own space, they have to share spaces in shelters, or with a lot of people, on the streets. The problem is that there are others (represented on the lower left side) that have a lot of space, unoccupied, that could be beneficial for others. There’s more diversity among the common people than with the people who have it all, too.

It took me around four months to finish, and I used copper coloured-paint to make the borders look like bricks. All of the houses are crooked because that’s how I see them here in Amsterdam.

Lost in Amsterdam (2022)

80 x 60 cms

Acrylic on canvas

I had just moved to Amsterdam and was struggling to get around the city, so I decided to take a map of the city and paint it as close to reality as possible. All the parks are there, and some of the big streets. The red light district is more pink or red, and the Royal Palace and the Dam are golden and silver. The train rails are metallic as well. This was the second painting where I used the back of a brush, and after this, all my paintings were made with a specialized tool for ceramics.

I still get lost sometimes, but that’s because of my awful sense of direction.

This took ten months to do, especially as I had to sketch every neighbourhood of the city. I also struggled to see how much of the city I’d paint. While doing this painting I realized that this is the biggest format I could work on in my tiny space, so it’s quite probable you won’t be seeing bigger pieces.

Teresa Villaseñor is a Mexican artist based in Amsterdam. She paints using acrylics on canvas and uses ceramic tools to achieve an unique pointillist texture on her work. Due to her technique, it takes months for each piece to be completed. Teresa’s work is heavily influenced by textile art and Mexican folklore, resulting in colourful pieces that look like they’ve been embroidered or knitted. She explores social themes like feminism and inequality, as well as her life as an immigrant in the Netherlands.

Thank you for letting me share with you my art. I hope I am able to transmit all the intentions I wanted to express in my paintings. As it is with most artists, it feels like stepping outside emotionally naked, with all my feelings and thoughts hanging out there in the cold. Sharing a piece of me through my paintings, especially when I have to invest so much time it’s a bit scary.

As you can see, my art takes quite some time for each piece, so all of them have an intention behind it. It is slow art, and I’m happy you are able to appreciate it.

In practical matters, I know you would love to have my art hanging from your walls, but at the moment, I’m not selling any paintings, as I wanted to have at least ten pieces to show around. However, I have custom prints made of them all and I’m working on my 10^th piece. So please reach out if something catches your eye, maybe we can work out something.

With love and appreciation,