Macarena Rojas: Fragments, Forms, and the Space Between
This interview is part of the series "In the Making: Conversations on Latin American Art in the UK".
Research, Interviews and Writing by Raquel Gonzalez Eizmendiz
Curatorial & Editorial Direction by Gabriela Román González & Mónica Núñez
Macarena feels drawing not just as a medium, but as a logic, personal archaeology. “Most of my drawings come as a response to an architectural practice that never existed,” she says. “They are fragments of imaginary spaces.” She understands how her brain functions differently, combining precise lines and geometric forms from her architectural training, her passion for photography and an interest in everyday life routines.
Macarena moved to London, completing her MFA at the Royal College of Art in 2017. That shift, geographical, professional, and personal, shaped her practice. “Arriving in the UK meant allowing my work to become more introspective,” she reflects. “It gave me the space to move beyond function and explore form as a container for memory, identity, and affect.”
Her primary material is paper, as a surface and as a substance. Its fragility, malleability, and intimacy allow her to move fluidly between drawing, weaving, and spatial constructions. “There is something raw and honest about drawing,” she insists. “Especially on paper, it records every hesitation.” That rawness is central to her ethos: an insistence on slowness, on precision, on ambiguity. These gestures often carry echoes of South American modernism, especially in her references to brutalist and geometric forms. But rather than claiming a fixed identity, Macarena positions her work as a search, a way to reconstruct a sense of place from afar. “There is a longing in the lines,” she says, “a pull toward a region I have left, but that still shapes how I see and how I draw.”
From left to right, Crocodiles, ink-drawing on paper, 2023; Johny Johny yes papa, colour on paper, 2020; Madre solo hay una, mixed media on paper, 2022; Warm soup, mixed media on paper, 2021
Being part of a Latin American diaspora in the UK comes with both community and contradiction. Macarena is cautious about how her work is framed. “There is always the risk of being reduced to a label. I am a Latin American woman, yes, but I want the work to speak beyond that.” She navigates this tension with care, seeing her identity as a lens, not a limit.
Untitled, painting on wood, 2024
Macarena does not work from strict plans. Instead, her ideas unfold through material experimentation and careful observation. “Sometimes, the logic of a piece reveals itself only at the end,” she explains. “There is a rhythm to it and a kind of silence.”
In a city where competition is constant and institutional access can be opaque, she found strength in informal networks. “I am still learning how the system works,” she admits. “But I am drawn to places and people that value depth, not just visibility.”
What she constructs are not just drawings, but spaces of resistance: soft grids, delicate tensions, and woven memories that linger. In Macarena’s work, architecture becomes a map of longing, and drawing becomes a way home.
Macarena Rojas Osterling was born in Lima, Peru. She studied Architecture at the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas. She completed the General Studies in Photography Program at the International Centre of Photography in New York (2012) and received her Master's in Fine Arts at The Royal College of Art in London (2017). Her work has been exhibited in Black Box Projects Cromwell Place London (2022), Crisis Galería Lima (2019), Art Lima (2018), Museo AMANO Lima (2018), Camden Arts Center London (2017), Edinburgh College of Art (2016), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Lima (2016), ArtBo Bogotá (2016), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile (2014), Wu Galería (2014-2015), International Center of Photography New York (2012), Triskelion Arts New York (2013), amongst other public and privately held exhibitions.
