Sheila Toledo

All Embracing by Sheila Toledo, photo by Matthias Stephan

Lucerne, Switzerland/ Spain

My name is Sheila Toledo Ribes and I am currently studying toward my PhD at the
Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain. Previously, I completed my Master of Fine Arts
at the University of Applied Sciences in Koblenz, specifically at the Institut für
Künstlerische Keramik und Glass (IKKG).

Since 2008 my interest in the material of glass has been continuously growing. It is
currently the material with which I identify completely because of its history, nature,
purity, and its philosophical implications.

The process with which I model or choose each artistic piece, allows me to glimpse the
importance of the presence or absence of the individual in the world. Of the various
negative and positive emotional confrontations that society, culture and the individual
endure. How heat, synonymous with war and love, has had the ability to break the rigidity
of glass - society.

How throughout the collective and individual history the imprint of things and
circumstances is engraved as the rings of the tree trunk. I am constantly searching for the condition of freedom that the human being was born with. Through mirror glass I reflect my own never-ending stream of questions. Possibly these questions and reflections are a dialectical confrontation between the vision of the world and the one’s own internal construction. An incessant duality that makes us human.