Animal Studies is dedicated to Maria Luisa’s beloved dog Rufían, a lost animal she intended to bring home for just one night and which turned into a 15 year friendship. Following his death in 2022, she started creating the artworks in this exhibition as part of her mourning process. By drawing and painting animals over the course of three years she began to heal and discovered interspecies memory. Her artwork became a metaphor and visual exploration of what it means to be human in all of its many forms: the herd, resilience, migration, and motherhood. There is a clear historical connection to ancient cave paintings such as those found in Lascaux, France, but her greatest artistic influence is her great grandfather, the renowned Chilean painter Waldo Vila Silva.

The work has a quiet beauty and meditative presence whether viewing intimate watercolors of migrating giraffes and a flock of sheep finding safety in numbers or the large scale soft pastel that shows a great herd. The latter serves as a timeline of her process as she refined her craft and the drawings became more detailed. The imagery leads the viewer into moments of self reflection inviting us to explore our reliance on extended networks for survival and comfort.