Through Invisible Waters: Ángela Jiménez Durán
Paris-based Spanish artist Ángela Jiménez Durán’s material sculptures and installation works do not give in to binary thinking. Instead, they embrace a familiar perception towards strangeness, where it is not treated as an anomaly but as an intrinsic part of life. Her research combines multiple fields such as science fiction, geology, biology, and speculative futures. This poetic aspect of her creations, inspired by South American magical realism—unlike fantasy and surrealism, which create a sharp separation between reality and the dreamlike—integrates the fantastical or the alien into the real world as natural occurrences coexisting without disrupting the narrative logic.
Jiménez Durán participated in the 2024 exhibition The Origin of Everything Strange (accompanied with artist Marlon de Azambuja and curator Margaux Knight) which explored the possibilities of collaboration and the non-linearity of exhibition-making. Drawing on inspirations from science fiction, Jiménez Durán’s sculpture invites the viewer to resist explicitly defined ways of thinking and absolute truths. What’s unique about her work is that the adaptability of her art transforms the space into an open-ended and alternative realm where we question how we perceive the unknown, whether through speculating on the worlds we inhabit or the ideas we hold towards the unfamiliar. Her sculptures act as pieces of a larger narrative, with gaps and interruptions, where their history is still being written, and meaning evolves over time.
Her recent sculptures, Temporal Anomaly and Under the Sand, engage with the materials that define liminality. In Under the Sand, sand is used as a geographical threshold between land and sea where it meets water, is neither solid nor entirely submerged but functions as a site of transition in between two states of existence. Collected from a nearest shore, she re-contextualizes the sand under a new perspective on its elemental role as a boundary and its poetics of material transformation. Temporal Anomaly, in turn, examines the formation of puddles. These natural manifestations emerge when surface tension shifts into a depression and the water collects. Ángela Jiménez Durán magnifies these transient compositions, reifying their dormant potentiality as reservoirs that may contain millennia of unfossilized minerals.
As the belief systems of our world today continue to be driven by hyper-rational methodologies on how we perceive or control reality, her creative force delves into crossings, interactions, and paradigm shifts, embodying a fluid quality and archaic thinking. This is where her work aligns with our rhizomatic values at Plasma. Much like the collective vision we incorporate, Ángela’s practice has the character to evolve into different forms and layers, against a direct or singular interpretation. Knowledge and experience are rarely just one thing but always in flux, shifting; continuously layered, and full of compositions. On this note, we were happy to have the opportunity to learn more about Ángela and her practice.
What mediums and concepts do you work with?
I work mainly in sculpture and installation, although I also write and draw, so my practice involves a mix of different mediums. However, installation and sculpture remain the main ones. My work is often site-specific, I like to engage with the spaces where I’m showing my work. I see space as an additional layer that is essential to what I’m trying to imagine. When thinking about an installation, there are always the questions: Where is this happening? When is it happening? Space and time influence not only what I work on but also how I work.
My practice is pretty open in terms of themes, but one of my main research interests is water and the poetics of water. I approach water in many different ways and sometimes think of it in terms of geologic science-fiction—imagining how the elements, primarily water but not particularly, might exist differently a million years from now. I consider what water could become and how it could expand our perception of what should be a certain way, or how our bodies could react to those changes. I like to have this kind of impossibility that happens in the works.
Your practice often moves between installation and writing. How do these mediums interact in your work?
Most of the time, writing comes in during the beginning stages of the work. When I’m preparing an installation I like to write the story behind it. For example, I did a show in the Canary Islands a couple of years ago called The Landing of the Snake. I wrote a short story about this weird clay snake that landed on an island, what it discovered and what developed from there. Narrative is a strong component in my process. I also read poetry a lot, and I think there’s this special perspective in poetry that can reference things or be much more open to interpretation as a story.
I’ve been writing The Poems of Inner Water, and those are my biggest body of work related to poetry. They’re often based on very scientific facts. I’m a bit of a geek, so I like to read about science and geology. For one of my latest poems, Tears of Sadness, I found out this crazy fact about water. It talks about how tears change their composition depending on the reason they are shed. Sometimes, I start with something very concrete and real, but then I go into a world that is much more poetic, mythological, or maybe even dreamlike.
Tears of sadness, 2025, poem, sublimation print on chiffon, submerged in the LA river waters in February 2025.
You are now working on a research project in Los Angeles which involves local archives. Can you talk a bit about the kind of resources you’re using?
Usually, I don’t work often with documents, but being here in Los Angeles, I really wanted to focus on the LA River. Specifically, I’ve been looking at maps of the river from the Los Angeles Public Library archives. In the 1930s the LA River was paved, concrete was poured over it, and these gigantic channels were built. This had been planned long before, and you can see in the maps how they were already sketching silhouettes of straight channels over the river’s course. It’s interesting to see the relationship between the city and this body of water through these maps over time, which was already very problematic.
This is also one of those—I like to call them—happy accidents that sometimes happen in the process. While making the drawings, I noticed that the graphic style of the maps really resembled my own work. So, there was a beautiful connection there.
What role does collaboration play in your practice, and how do you approach working with others in creative spaces?
There are two types of collaborations I like to engage in. The first would be when I create large-scale works, because there’s a moment where I can’t do it by myself, I need other bodies, other people to help. This creates a kind of collective choreography generated through movements. For example, a five-meter sculpture needs to be moved together and there’s something special about that process that participates in the work. When I open a show, it is important for me to be vocal about all the people who worked on the pieces.
The second type of collaboration isn’t with people but rather with materials, things that may not be alive but I still interact with them in a certain way. One example of this is my series of works called Humedades, which means “infiltrations” in Spanish. It consists of boxes filled with water that are hidden in exhibition spaces. Over time, the water seeps out, creating marks on walls, columns, or floors. I consider these works to be collaborations because I propose the context—a sort of protocol—for the water. After that, the water does its own thing, seeping through the wood, spreading across surfaces, transforming the space, the materials, even the carpet on the floor.
As a sculptor and installation artist, here I shift away from the idea that I alone determine what happens or how a work should be shown. It’s not just building an idea that I have in my mind; rather, I set a proposition and then observe what happens. Will it behave, react as I imagined? The materials play an active role with their own nature—be it through their weight, their liquidity, or their solidity—determining how the piece is going to look in the end.
What is a curatorial or artistic collaboration that you would love to contribute in?
After working on my project in LA about the river, I realized that I had never really thought about the Seine—the river in Paris that I know so well. I was a bit shocked at myself, wondering, How have I never considered this before? Maybe there’s a way to create a continuation of the project I’m working on here, but in my own home environment. Another thing I’d love to explore is working with a biennial format. As my work is very installation-based, it is very immersive, and I think that aligns well with the structure of biennials. It also allows for a longer period to prepare the installation. That would be a big dream for me.
You’re currently in LA for a residency at 18th Street Arts Center. We’re curious—does a specific location or environment become a part of your work?
When you leave for an artist residency, there’s always a quality of the unknown, you know, you can’t foresee everything in advance. You have a few ideas or even desires for what you want to explore, but I believe it’s important to let the place speak to you and to adapt to the reality in context of where you’re working. In my case, I knew I wanted to focus on invisible or hidden waters in Los Angeles.
That choice also sparked many conversations because there are already several initiatives and organizations in LA dedicated to the river. Groups like LA Waterkeeper, or places like Clockshop, which has a strong connection to the river and manages various activities around it. There’s also Metabolic Studio, where they do a lot of work about and with the LA River. I didn’t want to be someone isolated from the local context, who just comes in with an outside perspective and plasters their view on things. At least at the beginning, I try to listen and understand the situation, what is happening, and acknowledge the work that's been done so far.
How are you and the artist community in Los Angeles responding to the recent fires and the loss of nature?
It's a good question. I don't feel like I'm in the right position to answer that, just because, you know, I'm not from LA. My whole life isn't here, so there's so many things that I can try to imagine, but I don't think I would be able to really understand what it feels like to have your home or studio burned down. What's particular about the recent LA fires is that since we now have so many batteries and electric cars, much of that has burned down and contaminated the soil. Since it has melted it [the environment] is now toxic, releasing asbestos as well.
Here in the residency, I've met a few artists that have been displaced by the fires. I personally helped with the initiative United Artists for Los Angeles along with Marie Serruya, who is from France but she's also based in the States, and with Meat Dept. TV. In our case, it was about connecting artists, auctioning off their works and donating [the proceeds] to the LA Fire Department Foundation. That’s how we found our way to contribute. But I've seen people help in many different ways. There's a lot of solidarity that has taken over the city, which has been beautiful to watch.
Where can we find you in 2025? Are there any upcoming projects or ideas you’re currently exploring?
The closest upcoming project is my solo exhibition in Tacoma. I was invited by Colombian curator Jairo Hoyos Galvis for a project related to The Poems of Inner Water. It will be my second show in the U.S., so that’s a great milestone.
Right after that, I have a project in collaboration with POUSH at Château La Coste, a beautiful site in the south of France. The show is curated by Margaux Knight, with whom I’ve collaborated before, and Yvannoé Kruger, the director of POUSH. I’m particularly excited about this one because I’ll be working with trees and logs from the terrains of Château La Coste, making it a deeply site-specific work.
Have you ever worked with trees and nature, or is that something new for you?
I’ve made one sculpture that was the beginning of this series, which I presented in Madrid last year. The first log was very special because it came from a family place in the south of Spain that belonged to my grandparents, so there’s a whole sentimental story attached to it. Now I’m looking forward to really diving deeper into this work.
Something I maybe didn’t mention before is that I like to think of my work as a big story with different chapters, characters, and places that return with time. They all connect and converse with each other. Sometimes it’s the figure of snakes that keep coming back, and now I feel like a new chapter is shaping, introducing new characters. I call them ghost logs or ghost trees. I’m still figuring out exactly their status, but for sure they’re going to be part of the story.
Note: This interview was conducted over video call on March 3, 2025, and the transcription has been minimally edited and shortened for readability.
![Ángela’s 2021 site-specific work at the gardens of Maubisson Abbey. [ ECHO #4 , 2021. 2000x2000, thermal covers, regular covers, aluminum tape. INCOMING DREAMS , Maubuisson Abbey, FR. Courtesy of the artist.]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67a2518daa4e020e93038e22/1741557586305-6KKR1UPZGHSFFN1ODSEO/ECHO%234+-+courtesy+of+the+artist.jpg)
