Lizi Sánchez (b. 1975, Peru) is a multi-media artist, deeply interested in linguistics and how different processes, contexts and intentions transform the use and meaning of language. Drawing on her personal experience having migrated from Lima to London in 2005, Sánchez is fascinated by both verbal and visual language systems and how the city can be read as a person who is neither ‘from here’ nor truly ‘of there’. Her poetic installations are a both a nod to the history of abstraction in Latin America as well as ancient asemic writing practices.
Since moving to the UK, Sánchez has been accumulating a paper trail of receipts, bank statements, her son’s homework, notes from phone conversations, shopping lists, letters from back home and methodically transcribing them onto carbon-copy paper. The documents, both in Spanish and English, are intimate records of human life.
Sánchez has exhibited internationally in galleries and institutions such as Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano, Peru; Arróniz Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico; Whitechapel Gallery, UK; Studio Voltaire, UK; Drawing Room, UK; Walker Art Gallery, UK among others. Her work is featured in Remains-Tomorrow: Themes in Contemporary Latin American Abstraction, edited by Cecilia Fajardo Hill (Hatje Cantz, Dec 2022). She holds a BA in Fine Art from Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Lima and an MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London.