Artwork stories · Mexico City, 2020

Faces of Isolation: A Drawing Practice in Mexico City During 2020

Faces of Isolation began during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Isolated in Mexico City, Anastasia Shi drew one face each day, translating encounters, memories and emotions into black ink on white paper. Over four months, these individual drawings accumulated into a collective portrait.

A daily gesture becomes a shared field

The work developed through repetition. Each face began as an individual response, but the accumulation changed the relationship between the parts. Separate marks became a crowded visual field, bringing sorrow, fear, tenderness and hope into proximity.

That movement from one face to many is central to the work. Isolation is approached through a form that depends on connection: no single portrait explains the whole. The composition asks the viewer to move between close attention to a particular face and the larger network around it.

Line, texture and negative space

Created with markers and pens, the work moves between abstraction and figuration. Line and texture give the faces their presence; the spaces between them shape how they are encountered. The black-and-white palette focuses attention on the drawing itself and on the density of the accumulated forms.

This use of fragmentation connects Faces of Isolation to Shi’s wider artistic practice, where bodies, faces and organic shapes carry emotional and psychological experience. Here, the particular circumstances of Mexico City in 2020 give that language a personal starting point.

Looking and collecting

The work measures 280 × 174 cm. Its scale allows the viewer to encounter both the overall composition and the smaller gestures within it. See the artwork record for its factual details, and contact the studio for current availability, additional images or a viewing appointment.