Presented in the SOLO section at the 2026 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, New Visions on Humanity by Spanish-Dutch artist Raquel Maulwurf reflects a striking shift from her earlier focus on war toward the fragile, unstable conditions of today’s ecological crises. In this interview, Raquel speaks of listening to damaged landscapes — of recognising that “the landscape speaks; we just have to listen” — and describes her drawings as a way of giving voice to a voiceless nature. She reflects on society’s growing desensitisation to images of destruction, emphasising the need for repetition to enhance memory retention, where echoes become a means of resisting collective forgetting. Through her physically intensive process of cutting, scraping, and stripping away excess, she distils each scene to its essence, creating what she calls a “cautionary collective memory archive” that urges us to confront the consequences of human intervention and to imagine new ways of being in the world.
The soundscape ‘Humming from the Void’ composed by Terra Ray especially for the fair commissioned by the artist is available at the end of this interview.
While your earlier work focused on the remnants and destruction of war, your new pieces respond to the chaos wrought by nature and ecological disasters. In your charcoal and pastel landscapes, you depict scenes consumed by fire, oil spills, and polluted oceans. How do you approach the act of listening to these landscapes, and how does this listening shape your artistic practice?
The damaged landscape speaks; we just have to listen. Through my drawings, I try to give a voice to a voiceless nature. Nature cannot defend itself. The language I use is strictly visual, cautionary storytelling in a visual way. I let the images speak for themselves and hope to encourage listening, realising we ourselves are part of nature.
Transforming horrific events into evocative, monumental images, your works distil each event to its essential core. How do you understand these “echoes” within your practice, and how do you hope they convey what you describe as “New Visions on Humanity”, particularly in relation to the consequences of human intervention in nature?
My drawings are inspired by my fascination with mankind’s destructive urges: the devastation of his own habitat by war and ecocide. We have become immune to images of suffering and destruction, as we are confronted with an endless stream of it daily through the internet, social media and television. Today’s catastrophe soon will be yesterday’s news. We move on and forget. In my drawings, I try to bring to the surface and highlight what we prefer to forget. Echoes as a form of repetition; we need to repeat these warning images so we will not forget. New Visions on Humanity is an act of hope, a cautionary collective memory archive. Hopefully, it will make us think twice about repeating the same mistakes and find new solutions.
Your practice is deeply physical, marked by acts of cutting, scraping, and working into thick boards. These gestures make the act of resistance and destruction tangible. How do you approach the act of listening through this intense engagement with materials?
The repetitive sound of cutting into the museum board I work on, and the resistance of the material brings me into a deeper state of concentration. The outside world disappears, and I am able to listen more carefully to what the image has to say. I then strip the image of colour and any decorative details, until only the essence of the event remains. By cancelling all redundant noise, I hope the meaning is amplified.
Raquel Maulwurf is represented by Livingstone Gallery The Hague – Berlin
Maulwurf’s presentation at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair was made possible with the support of the Mondriaan Fund.