I want to perceive art as a vocation at the service of good, capable, through our sensitivity, of lifting our spirit, of enlightening our path. The value of art is that it can still cause wonder in our souls, an awe similar to the one we experience as children when we're discovering the world. In this sense, art has the capacity to excite us, and therefore give back our desire to live and enjoy the beauty that surrounds us. The characters I make — with their smooth surfaces and rounded shapes, generally very elaborate — are the pretext for creating a simple and direct language with an interplay of volumes and balances. With this language, I highlight the need for an inner gaze, silence, serenity, patience, tenderness, trust, etc.; feelings that unite us all. I often resort to feelings from my childhood: naïvety, surprise, wonder, absolute confidence, the desire to fly or run, to hold out my arms to feel the wind and the rain, to lie down to rest in the sun and close my eyes to simply breathe and dream. I also tackle a lot of topics about family being at the centre of experiences of love. We all need bridges that take us to places where we can rest our eyes and discover images that remind us that we were created to love, that it is possible to trust, and that at some point we felt blind confidence and an unalterable peace, even if it was only in our earliest childhood. Everything that is in our heart is still there, waiting for us, waiting for us to stop, internalise, quiet our mind and find that place within ourselves where everything makes sense. I like to think that my work can be a bridge to that place, at least for an instant. Mariela Garibay