I am a Mexican artist, born in 1990, currently living and working in Leiden, The Netherlands.

I grew up in Tequisquiapan, a small town near Mexico City, in an environment closely connected to art. My father, Knut Pani, is an incredible artist, and being surrounded by creative processes from an early age made art feel like a natural part of life. I studied at La Esmeralda in Mexico City, where I began developing a visual language rooted in perception and memory.

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For many years, the portrait has been one of the main structures in my work. I have never approached the face only as a way to represent a specific person. I see it as a place where perception becomes visible. A stain, a line, a shadow or a fragment of color can suddenly feel human, even when the image remains incomplete. I am interested in that moment when the mind starts to organize what it sees and gives meaning to something that is still open.

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My figures often appear as fragmented presences. They feel familiar without being fully identifiable, as if they came from dreams, passing encounters or memories registered without full awareness. This has led me to think of the human figure less as a fixed identity and more as a way to explore recognition, memory and imagination.

In recent years, my practice has moved toward a more abstract and material language.

 

I work with painting, drawing, paper, ceramics, and mixed media, in general, allowing each material to affect the direction of the piece. Gesture, accident, texture and color are not secondary elements in the work. They participate actively in the construction of the image. I am interested in what happens when control is interrupted, when the process opens a path I could not have planned, and when an experience begins to take form as an image.

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This search has also started to move beyond portraiture. A recent walking project across Europe expanded my attention toward landscape, distance, physical effort and the idea of unlearning familiar ways of seeing. The questions that shaped my portraits are still present, but they are now opening into a broader investigation of how images are formed through memory, movement and personal experience.

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My work does not try to explain a fixed subject. I want to create images that remain active and open to the viewer. What is incomplete or uncertain is not an absence. It is the space where recognition begins, where memory participates, and where meaning continues to form.