About Me

 

I’m a Mexican artist, born in 1990, currently living and working in Leiden, The Netherlands. I grew up in Tequisquiapan, a small village near Mexico City, in an environment full of artists—my father, Knut Pani, being an established artist himself. Surrounded by creativity from an early age, art became a natural and inevitable path for me. I studied at La Esmeralda (ENPEG, Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado) in Mexico City, where I began shaping a visual language that felt personal and true.

Since the beginning of my practice, I’ve been driven by the search for a pictorial language that is uniquely mine—something that goes beyond trends and speaks to the subconscious. My work often revolves around the human figure as a fragmented memory, inspired by those anonymous characters we see in dreams, in passing, or from deep within our subconscious. They appear and disappear—strangely familiar, but impossible to place. I’m fascinated by that threshold, where recognition fades into abstraction.

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Lately, my work has leaned further into that space—towards abstraction and the invisible line of perception. I often ask myself: What is essential for something to be perceived as a face? What can be taken away before it becomes something else entirely? These questions guide my painting process, where I explore the fine line between form and dissolution. It reminds me of the conceptual idea of the chair: whether it’s a real object, a photo, or a drawing, it’s still understood as a chair. But if you remove a leg—when does it stop being one?

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These themes carry into my most recent ceramic series, where I embrace spontaneity and allow the process to guide me. Working with clay reconnects me with a childlike, instinctive state of creation—where gesture, stain, and accident are not mistakes, but active collaborators in shaping the final image. The contrast between control (line) and chaos (stain) reflects the constant tension I see between free will and randomness—between what we choose and what we’re given.

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Ultimately, my work is an open invitation to explore how we recognize, remember, and construct what we believe is real—whether in a dream, a painting, or a fleeting thought.