Hidden fragments is an interpretative portrait of my grandmother, but also an intimate exploration of what the gaze is silent and the gesture reveals. It is not a literal representation, but an emotional construction through the stroke. In this drawing every wrinkle is more than detail: it is testimony. Every shade of the face, every texture of the hat, every fold of the clothes, is worked as if it contained a memory of its own or inherited. This face has seen a lot, has felt in silence and has resisted without asking to be told.

The work lives between the obvious and the veiled. What we see is his expression, but what touches us are his hidden fragments: the story he did not say, the pain he did not show, the tenderness he expressed with other forms. The use of graphite, sober and direct, enhances that feeling of living presence, without ornaments. The light does not beautify, it reveals. The close and frontal framing does not seek distance: it challenges.

This portrait is, deep down, an attempt to bring me closer to what she was beyond family ties. A way of honoring his face without idealizing it, of recognizing that in his humanity there was hardness and sweetness, strength and vulnerability. Hidden fragments is that: what is not said, but is.

29.7 × 42 cm (11.69 × 16.54 in)

Graphite / Cardboard

2018