Cyanotype Week: Clara Zaragoza

Cyanotype Week: Clara Zaragoza by Vicente CayuelaJune 25, 2025

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This week we are celebrating the artistry of five unique artists exploring the frontiers of cyanotype. Today we celebrate the work of Argentinean artist, Clara Zaragoza, who has recently had her first solo debut exhibition titled Punto Ciego at Galería PUHYU (Director Cristias Rosas Chocano). Zaragoza’s intricate collages and works on fabric explore themes of illusion and perspective, crafting meticulous pieces that morph in space as we traverse through it. In this special occasion, the 27-year old self-taught artists also included four pieces produced in collaboration with broken-glass artist with Toto Tatuer. An interview with the artist follows.

Portrait of Clara Zaragoza, courtesy the artist.

Clara Zaragoza (b. 1998) is a self-taught mixed media artist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work explores the boundaries of perception through techniques such as cyanotype, collage, textile work, and paper cutting, using materials like paper, cardboard, fabric, and recycled packaging. Clara’s pieces invite the viewer to move and reframe their gaze, revealing alternate images depending on the angle. She has exhibited her work in cities including Buenos Aires, Miami, Barcelona, and Mexico City.

Follow Clara on Instagram: @claraz___

Artist Statement
I approach my work as a way of questioning how and what we see. Using mixed media techniques like cyanotype, collage, fabric, and paper interventions, I create layered compositions that invite viewers to shift their perspective—physically and mentally. I’m interested in how light, time, and material interact to form images that aren’t always stable or fully visible at once. My pieces often echo organic shapes—clouds, fragments, or circles—that resist a fixed reading.
Instead of offering resolution, I aim to open up moments of suspension, where ambiguity and movement become part of the experience.

Portrait of Clara Zaragoza at Galería PHUYU, courtesy the artist.

Why cyanotype?
Cyanotype feels elemental—sunlight, water, time, paper. It’s both fragile and direct. I was drawn to the immediacy of the process, the bold blue, and the way it reveals unexpected textures. As someone who tends to be quite controlling in my process, cyanotype challenges me. It allows for precision up to a point, but always introduces a layer of unpredictability that forces me to let go.

Collaboration series with Toto Tatuer, 2025

Clara Zaragoza and Toto Tatuer ar Galeria PHUYU. Courtesy the artists.

When was the first time you encountered the medium?
I discovered cyanotype in 2022, just after finishing a degree in Organizational Information Systems. I was going through a moment of personal crisis—feeling disconnected from my path—and cyanotype became a turning point. It was the first process that allowed me to materialize ideas using light instead of code.

What about this process interests you the most?
Its unpredictability. Even with planning, cyanotype always leaves room for surprise. The exposure varies with the weather, the paper absorbs chemicals unevenly, and images can be ghostlike or bold.

How do the particularities of the medium relate to your overall artistic philosophies?
Cyanotype embodies the tension between visibility and invisibility that runs through my work. The process itself relies on light to reveal, but also leaves behind shadows, bleeds, and absences. That’s how I see perception: not as clarity, but as layered and partial. Cyanotype lets me build images that can’t be fully grasped at once.

Have you developed your own process working in this medium? If so, can you guide us through it?
I wouldn’t say I have a single standardized process—I work very much by project. Some pieces evolve over weeks, others are built in response to a space or a specific idea. What I have developed is a personal system: I start by imagining and outlining the concept, often through drawings or scale mockups. Then I move into execution, which might involve darkroom exposures, pressing and drying papers, cutting or folding, or integrating textiles.
What I love about my work is precisely that it resists routine—each project demands its own rhythm and sequence.

Have you encountered limitations with the medium, and if so, what were they and how have you tried to overcome them?
Working at a large scale with cyanotype can be challenging. In Argentina, it’s difficult to find large transparency prints for negatives, and the few available options are expensive. I often work by assembling multiple transparencies to reach the scale I need, which adds complexity—especially when trying to achieve tonal consistency across the entire piece.
Humidity also plays a role, affecting drying and exposure, but I’ve learned to manage it and incorporate its effects when needed. I’ve also learned that redoing certain stages of my process is sometimes necessary, and I’ve come to understand that repetition is part of my practice. It can be frustrating, but it’s also a learning experience.

How do you think the public perception of cyanotype has changed in the art world?
Personally, I feel it’s a technique that had been somewhat forgotten, and now, through the work of many artists around the world, we are bringing it back into the contemporary art scene. It’s definitely being re-evaluated. What was once seen as an “alternative” process is now being pushed into complex territory by artists who use it conceptually and materially.