Lara Padilla, a.k.a. Sra. D, lives and works between Madrid, Miami and New York. As a multidisciplinary artist, she uses painting, dance, sculpture and fashion as means of artistic expression. She combines texture and movement, canvases and garments that allow her work to travel between different social and professional contexts.
The alias Sra.D stands as a denunciation against the loss of identity of women when they get married, automatically giving up their surname to acquire that of their husband. This is something that still happens in many countries, and it has become an implicit part of the commitment between a man and a woman. Through her work, Sra.D seeks to represent all those women who seek their emancipation. Women of no one.
With a degree in Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid and a Master in Film Photography Direction from the TAI School, she has participated in solo and group exhibitions at national and international level (Museo de Zapadores de Madrid-November 2020- or Art Basel Miami 2019). In addition to her artistic career, she has exploited her profile as a fashion designer, collaborating with clients such as Springfield, Pepe Jeans and Levis. She also collaborates actively with Patricia Field, the stylist of series such as “Sex In The City” or “The Devil wears Prada”, for her project Patricia Field Art Fashion, creating unique hand-painted garments.
The work of Sra. D, a.k.a. Lara Padilla, encompasses disciplines such as painting, sculpture, dance, performance and fashion design.
Her mostly figurative pieces draw attention to the power of female representation through the deformation of the body and the use of colour and texture. A vindication of gender exhibited through large hands as powerful instruments of battle or heavy feet, an image of the perseverance of women in their struggle. Sra D. understands art, not as a silent showcase, but as a path of action and political intervention.
Her aesthetic is an ode to diversity, portraying all types of bodies in order to promote a look of equality and authenticity.
Her performances dialogue face to face with her pictorial and sculptural creation through the similarity between compositions and trajectories. The use of body painting underlines the plastic aspect of her choreographies, while in her urban actions she insists on this reflection on the construction of identity conceived as belief.
However, the female body is not a prison for Sra. D. in her latest creations she has expanded her plastic discourse by exploring African and pre-Columbian art, cultural chapters of great social and conceptual significance such as Genesis or the interaction of bodies with new supports and textures.