Cosemtics and Cosmos Blend in Circe Irasema’s Wooden Sculptures
‘Hecha a mano’ (2024). All photos by Ramiro Chávez, courtesy of Proyectos Monclova, shared with permission
Cosemtics and Cosmos Blend in Circe Irasema’s Wooden Sculptures
July 25, 2025
Art
Grace Ebert
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“For me, painting is a question about time,” says Circe Irasema. The artist, who lives and works in Mexico City, thinks deeply about the dominance of the male gaze in Western art history and how that authority influences the technical and material qualities of the works themselves. Preserving a piece made in this tradition, her work acknowledges, necessarily means preserving all that it represents.
As a contrast, the artist has turned to an unconventional feminized medium. Using colorful eyeshadow cakes, powder blushes, and long acrylic nails, Irasema creates “an alternative version of the history of painting. A history that tells intimate or hidden stories about the body, the feminine, the performative, metamorphosis, the fragility and transience of life, the domestic, the gaze, and beauty.”
“Los brazos de Morfeo (from ‘Cosmic Garden’ series)” (2025), gouache, acrylic, and polished artificial nails on an anatomical wooden mannequin, two pieces of 80 x 20 x 8 centimeters each
Combining comestics and adornments with more common materials like gouache and acrylic paint, Irasema creates vibrant anatomical models and more abstract wooden works embedded with eyeshadows. Appearing as paintings from a distance, these mixed-media works meld a traditional art form with a longstanding mode of self-expression and beautification.
Given the delicate nature of powder compacts—a reality for anyone who’s dropped an eyeshadow palette and watched it shatter—the fragile material requires a level of care that becomes symbolic for the artist. “It stems from a popular understanding that relates to the everyday, distances itself from academia, and maintains a connection with sentimental education,” she adds. Where expression through high art has long been privileged, makeup and fashion have historically been read as shallow and even frivolous, a conception Irasema handily rejects.
Many of the works shown here are part of a series titled Cosmic Painting, a nod to the shared etymological root of the terms cosmetics and cosmos. Translating to “order,” “the word is understood as something harmonious and beautiful,” the artist adds. “This Greek meaning represents and is the basis of the canon of beauty that emerges from geometry, the cornerstone of painting since the Renaissance. This work attempts to use these same premises to reconfigure this pictorial notion with the compact powder of makeup.”
Irasema is currently preparing for a solo exhibition at Carrillo Gil Art Museum and creating works for Art Basel Miami. Follow her practice on Instagram.
“Pintar II” (2024), gouache, acrylic, and polished artificial nails on an anatomical wooden mannequin, 27 x 8 x 8 centimeters
‘Hecha a mano’ (2024)
“Cartografía de formas simples” (2024), eyeshadow palettes on 17 plywood assemblages, 122 x 244 x 4 centimeters
“Flor estrella (from ‘Cosmic Garden’ series) (open)” (2024), gouache and eyeshadows inlays on veneered wood, 6 x 40 x 40 centimeters
Installation view at Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City (2024)
Detail of “Arcoiris (from ‘Cosmic Garden’ series)” (2024), eyeshadow palettes on tropical wood assemblage
Installation view at Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City (2024)
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