In “Light and Matter,” Rachel Valdés unfolds a pictorial investigation that intertwines science, perception, and spirituality.

This series stems from a sensitive study of diffraction, understood both as the physical phenomenon of light bending as it passes through a new medium, and as a metaphor for our own internal transformations when we change our mental, emotional, or sensory state.

The works function as neural landscapes and internal stages, abstract representations of what happens inside the body and mind: unseen landscapes, maps of subconscious activity, electrical impulses that translate into color and vibration. They are scenes that seem to emerge from within: from cellular memory, breath, or the emotional echoes that reside beneath the surface of rational thought.