María Alejandra Ibáñez’s photography captures the magical and mystical of the quotidian. Coaxing light to evoke wistfulness, her compositions animate the inanimate. When placed into holistic focus, subject-object relationships, and the memories that define our attachment to things, serve as the vital lenses through which we identify scenarios. Ibáñez accentuates the simple things in life, such as the home and furniture. Her work allows for quiet reflection on the kept nostalgia of the objects around us, when we back away to observe them. Corners, tableaus, and hidden places are imbued with identity and remembrance. 

Peruvian-born, Ibáñez strives to connect people to each other. “We live in a society that is starting to lack and ignore connections and personal relations,” says the artist. Raised fatherless, she was nonetheless surrounded by love through her mother’s family, creating precious memories in the countryside of Lima with relatives. When she lost her grandfather in the blink of an eye, Ibáñez could feel the sorrow and the emptiness but simultaneously the beauty and warmth of love that her grandparents shared for years, and became compelled to conceptualize memory relations through her work. She was featured in the 2019 Chelsea International Photography Competition Exhibition.