Monsters Paradise: The Becoming of Her Divine Beast: Monsters Paradise: The Becoming of Her Divine Beast
Raw’s large-scale paintings are symbolically layered, emotionally vulnerable and fiercely dreamlike. Her expansive canvases depict intimate female figures within lush, imaginary landscapes that shift between the mythological and the psychological.
Georgina Pounds Gallery opens with Monsters Paradise: The Becoming of Her Divine Beast, the first solo exhibition in Mexico City by Vanessa Raw. Opening on February 4, 2026, Raw’s large-scale paintings are symbolically layered, emotionally vulnerable and fiercely dreamlike. Her expansive canvases depict intimate female figures within lush, imaginary landscapes that shift between the mythological and the psychological.
Monsters Paradise: The Becoming of her Divine Beast, draws inspiration from Barbara Creed’s The Monstrous-Feminine, reimagining what Creed described as ‘that which unsettles boundaries,’ not horrifying but transformational. Raw’s paintings take this idea into a poetic space, blending classical imagery with the aura of feminine deities, showing women in contemplation in nature. And So It Is, 2025 features a female figure holding a goldfinch, a gesture that evokes Eve and introduces themes of joy, hope, knowledge, temptation, and spiritual return. The Dark Days Are Over, 2025, suggests an inner Eden through its landscape, trembling between ruin and renewal, where memory, emotion, and the divine intertwine.
Presented in an historic 1911 building in Colonia Roma Norte, the exhibition speaks intimately with the architecture of the space. High ceilings, delicate mouldings and light filtering through the rooms generate a warm atmosphere that amplifies the luminous quality of Raw’s paintings; a modern harmony with baroque accents. In these rooms, the memory, myth and spirit of artists like Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo continue to resonate.
Conceived and developed in partnership with Carl Freedman Gallery, this exhibition forms part of an ongoing series of projects realised through reciprocal collaborations with established international galleries, fostering exchange between international artists and Mexico City’s contemporary art scene.
