Yaima Carrazana
Letters from Paradise
2018

The paintings in the exhibition Letters from Paradise distil the particular psychology and ideology embedded in institutional colour palettes. Working with oil paint on large-format canvases, Carrazana creates compositions dominated by gradients, transparencies, colour interference, and harmonious combinations. These elements produce illusory spaces—perhaps free from bureaucracy—while imagining a kind of heaven shaped by optimism.

For the artist, Letters from Paradise encapsulates several years spent trying to understand “the good life” in a foreign country. Carrazana allows herself the freedom to reinterpret official Dutch colour codes from her own perspective as a foreigner. The work’s provocation lies in its apparent open-endedness: its refusal to impose a fixed meaning and its capacity to transform a private experience into a public one.

The paintings appropriate and rearticulate the meticulous graphic design of the Dutch government, drawing on its government-wide visual identity. They represent the culmination of Carrazana’s earlier bodies of work, from Declaration Letters—based on designs used by the Ministry of Justice, the Tax and Customs Administration (Belastingdienst), and official documents concerning her immigration status in the Netherlands—to Foreign Affairs, which draws on a broader range of bureaucratic sources. For Foreign Affairs, Carrazana appropriates the colour palette used by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in its official communications.

Location: NEVERNEVERLAND at de Punt
Frans de Wollantstraat 84, 1018 SC Amsterdam