Libia Rocha

Artistic statement.


I make art as a way of reclaiming, processing emotions and remembering—myself, my body, my language, and what has been lost or fractured along the way. All the moments I lost due to depression, body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria.

My work weaves together painting, poetry, and visual symbolism to explore the instability of identity, the sensory texture of memory, and the emotional force of transformation. I’m drawn to liminal states and in-between spaces: between languages, between genders, between truth and illusion.

In my series Habitar, I examined the experience of inhabiting a gendered body that defies social expectations. The paintings are emotionally intense and chaotic—filled with surreal anatomy, broken text, and layered gestures. They speak from a space of dissonance, grief, and resilience.

With Girlhood, I shifted toward light, softness, and reclamation. I wanted to reclaim the symbols of femininity and innocence that were once inaccessible to me. The butterfly, recurring throughout the series, is my metaphor for emergence: delicate yet tenacious, shaped by rupture, capable of flight.

Mirages, my most recent series, moves into full abstraction. These works delve into the illusions we hold—how memory distorts, how feelings shift, how perception plays tricks on us. Each painting is built slowly, through layering and erasure, becoming a tactile field of emotional ambiguity. I want the viewer to encounter them like dreams or memories: open-ended, haunting, deeply felt.

My practice is shaped by my lived experience and my desire to create space for what doesn’t always make sense. I paint to honor that which is fluid, unfinished, and quietly radiant.