Sentimental

Vika Álvarez is a young Mexican illustrator that has explored her talent throughout different artistic approximations. She started her career from mere curiosity, focused on her traditional work, searching for her voice between pencils and brushes. Later on, she decided to professionalize her abilities, approaching analogue and digital illustration, developing her own style that distinguishes her from the traditional Mexican illustration movement.

Her work is focused on female empowerment and the complexity of its edges. She also proposes deep personal exploration, a questioning to our interior that aims to heal her own wounds and empathize with her viewers’ pain.

On one hand, her style is recognizable because of her dark-meets-femine aesthetic derived from punk and metal like imagery and soft symbols, intense color gradients and cutting lines that contrast with anthropomorphic feminine figures, that, despite their delicate demeanor, irradiate strength and vitality. On the other hand, some of her illustrations are thoughts, ideas that are frozen in time that seem to solidify when expressed by Vika, surpassing the ephemeral nature of words to turn themselves into political statements.

Being a woman is a political statement in itself and Vika’s illustrations take this idea to its ultimate consequences: a face, a word, a woman’s gaze: it’s clear that the revolution can be ironic, sarcastic, sweet, informative; the revolution can also be healing ourselves from past wounds.

Among her collaborations, Vika has illustrated for Elle Latin America, Vogue Mexico, GreenPeace Mx, Pimienta Films, Seagrams, Grupo Victoria, among others. She has also worked with feminist collectives, such as Mujeres Incendiarias, Cruces x Rosas, Menstruación sin IVA, Nosotras tenemos otros datos and FemxFem and platforms like Diversify your narrative (Stanford University). Her work has been reviewed in digital media like Malvestida, Chilango, Noise, Feminist, Coolhunter MX and Viceversa Mag (NY). In 2021 she was awarded with the University of York's and England's Art Council art grant as part of feminist collective "Las Iluministas".

It is based on one of my first designs for t-shirts. I wanted to commemorate this part of my career where I was finding my voice and elevate it to the next level since I think it's one of the pieces that represents me the best.