What am I going to paint? I asked myself the day my teacher decided I didn’t need it anymore, the same day I decided to give it all up and become an artist by trade, full time. The answer was simple: What I know! Since I was very young I studied and visited the old Guayaquil neighborhood, in the center of the city. In my first solo exhibition, a lady asked why I painted drunks and cantinas? I couldn´t answer at the time. I am the daughter of an ex-alcoholic father whom I met when I was 23 years old. It was no longer time to be father and daughter, but we became great friends.

In our long conversations with him I discovered that in his youth, he inhabited the neighborhood, lost himself in its nights and drank it all in. I understood that an unconscious force led me to the places that would tell me about him. After his death I made a series of self-referential works that allude to a universal theme: the father´s quest. I am also a unique but repeated human being; what makes me different and at the same time unique is having a sister like me. I have always lived a dual life for that with my most recent artwork I want to experience who I am in a singular way. If I wanted to sum up my work in one concept, it would be “IDENTITY”.

At the beginning I painted without conscious awareness, but now I understand that in the bars of downtown I was looking for my father; that father´s quest is the looking for myself and all my work had helped me to find answers to three fundamental questions: Who am I, where do I come from? And where do I belong?  – Male Correa –

During her second residency at ‘ace Male Correa gave herself to her personal process by opening questions about herself, this process in its origins: her mother’s womb. As a consequence, a scenario was presented for the reunion with the companion of that moment and unique space, her twin sister. Malena masters several pictorial techniques to perfection in this residence she experimented with Photolithography without water.

Male Correa is a graphic designer, visual artist and writer. Her artistic practice revolves around the theme of identity and is expressed in various techniques, such as engraving, drawing and painting. She has been a university professor for more than ten years. Since 2002 she has attended the printmaking workshop La Estampa. She currently co-edits the literary magazine P&P+arte. In 2018 she received the national visual arts award in drawing from the Universidad de Antioquia.