Abstract

Remedios Varo (Gerona, Spain 1908–Ciudad de México 1963) was a visual artist and an avid reader of science who would profess that only science could respond to the ultimate meaning of reality. Her work has been studied as a confluence of styles, namely, fantasy, surrealism, and symbolism. It has also been considered figurative and narrative given the complex scenarios depicted in her paintings in which a humanoid reacts to what is happening around her: a world of living objects, animals, alchemical tools, fantastic vehicles, etc. Furthermore, the artist frequently depicts the “invisible” threads of the relationships established within the painting’s narrative. In this article, I will look beyond existing art historical studies of Varo’s work using hermeneutic tools from Posthumanism in order to delve into questions that not only seem relevant to understand her work but also take into account her own (claimed) scientific vocation. Amongst others, I will use the notions of agential realism and intra-action (Karen Barad), feminism and cybernetics (Dona Haraway), OOO (object-oriented ontology), and concepts from Quantum Physics such as entanglement and the cocreativity of the observer and the observed. The overall goal is to illuminate Remedios Varo’s visual ecologies within a scenario that ontologically and epistemologically decenters the human and advocates, as science has been postulating in these last decades, for an eminently relational and profoundly vital reality.