Raquel Algaba’s work is a search for the symbolic body—understood as myth, memory, and material. She explores how ancestral narratives endure through form and how they can be reactivated in the present, not as folklore, but as tools to question desire, power, and identity. Her sculptures evoke beings that exist in dreamlike thresholds—neither fully human nor divine—echoes of cultures that were never truly separate.
Raquel Algaba (Madrid, 1992) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans sculpture, drawing, ceramics and Korean painting, reflecting a symbolic and critical inquiry into mythology, identity and cultural memory. Her visual language is rooted in cross-cultural references—from Mesopotamian guardians and Greek heroes to Korean motifs and Egyptian cosmology—crafting hybrid scenographies that blur the line between fiction and ritual.
Algaba’s work engages with decolonial perspectives, investigating how myths and materials shape the way we perceive the body, power and pleasure. The lotus flower, often central in her compositions, becomes a metaphor for transformation, desire, and the fine line between spiritual elevation and sensory excess. Her recent sculptural cycles reinterpret the myth of the lotus-eaters through Afro-Mediterranean and Asian iconographies, suggesting ambivalent states of ecstasy and surrender.
She holds a Master’s degree in Art from the University of Seville and has studied at the Complutense University of Madrid and the Stuttgart State Academy of Fine Arts. Her work has been exhibited in institutions and events such as the Centro de Creación Contemporánea C3A (Córdoba), CAAC Sevilla, CEART Madrid, Kultur Palais Lichtenstein, and the MUA in Alicante. She has also participated in several artist residencies in Denmark, Portugal and Japan, and has been awarded grants and prizes from Iniciarte (Andalusian Government), the Community of Madrid and BilbaoArte Foundation.