Female Portraits: Looking Back to the Past
2023
Dignity (2023) is a contemporary artwork by Séfora Camazano from the series Female Portraits: Looking Back to the Past. The portrait explores dignity as that which remains when a person is forced to leave part of their life behind in order to build another.
Technique
Mixed media — photography, digital painting and hand intervention. Fine Art Giclée print on canvas with a conservation finish.
Dimensions
128.5 × 87 cm
Year
2023
Series
Female Portraits: Looking Back to the Past
The protagonist
Born in Cuba, Yosmara grew up believing that her country had the best political system in the world. She recalls being taught to defend it as an unquestionable truth. That certainty began to unravel when her own ideas no longer aligned with those she had been taught.
At the state institution where she worked, colleagues she had considered friends publicly denounced her. According to her testimony, a year of harassment followed, including threats, surveillance at home and restrictions on her ability to leave the country. Eventually she escaped Cuba, leaving behind her home, family and, most painfully, her young daughter.
“My crime? Dreaming of a better life, questioning what we were told was unquestionable.” — Yosmara
Yosmara
In Valencia, starting again meant facing loneliness and uncertainty, but also discovering everyday freedoms she had not known in Cuba: being able to work and travel without asking permission.
Her daughter’s words remain a source of strength: “Mum, you can do it. I support you. We will be together when the time is right.”
Yosmara had followed Séfora Camazano’s work for years. She joined Female Portraits: Looking Back to the Past because she recognised herself in the experiences of other women who had sought refuge in Spain. She wanted her testimony to offer solidarity and hope, rather than be remembered only through pain.
Yosmara during the creation of Dignity · Valencia, 2023
The meaning of the title
Yosmara was taught that questioning the political system in which she had grown up was an act of betrayal. When she began to think differently, she faced threats, harassment and persecution. Yet she refused to surrender her right to hold her own beliefs.
Leaving Cuba meant losing the life she knew and enduring the painful separation from her daughter. But remaining would have meant accepting a life in which others dictated what she could think, say and aspire to.
Dignity is about that refusal to surrender one's convictions, even when defending them demands an extraordinary personal sacrifice. It is the recognition that freedom of thought and the right to decide one's own future are essential to human dignity.
“Do not let anyone silence your voice. Fight for your ideals, your freedom, your independence of mind.” — Yosmara, 2023
Keys to the work
01 · The gaze
Yosmara looks directly at the viewer with serenity and determination. After being threatened and silenced for expressing her beliefs, she can finally face the world without lowering her gaze. Her expression represents the freedom and confidence she has begun to recover.
02 · The black dress
The black dress covers her body from neck to arms, symbolising the restrictions and oppression she experienced in Cuba. Although she has escaped that environment, its consequences remain part of her memory. Freedom does not immediately erase the weight of what she endured.
03 · The almond blossoms
The blue cushion evokes Van Gogh's blossoming almond branches, a symbol of renewal and hope. Almond trees are among the first to flower after winter. For Yosmara, they represent her arrival in Spain and the possibility of rebuilding her life after persecution, loneliness and uncertainty.
04 · The flowers
The flowers emerge from the darkness, representing the inner beauty, sensitivity and hope that survived Yosmara's experience. Despite the suffering and sacrifices, she retained her capacity to love, to dream and to believe in a better future.
05 · The ring
The ring is Yosmara's own. Unlike the symbolic elements introduced into the composition, this personal detail belongs to her everyday life. It reminds us that the woman represented is not a fictional character, but a real person with her own identity, memories and relationships.
06 · The unfinished
The painting is deliberately left unfinished at the top and bottom. When Yosmara posed, her daughter was still in Cuba. These incomplete areas symbolise that painful absence: although Yosmara had begun a new life in freedom, an essential part of her life was still missing.
Curatorial reading
Dignity tells the story of a woman who lost much of what she loved in order to preserve her freedom. Through Yosmara's portrait, Séfora Camazano explores the personal consequences of political persecution and the difficult choices imposed on those who refuse to renounce their convictions.
The composition brings together two realities. The dark dress recalls the oppression Yosmara experienced, while the flowers and blossoming branches introduce the hope of a new beginning. Her calm expression does not deny what happened to her; it reveals the strength with which she continues to face life.
Yet her story has no complete resolution. The unfinished areas of the painting make visible what remains absent: her daughter, left behind in Cuba. The possibility of rebuilding a life in Spain exists alongside the pain of a family still separated.
In this work, dignity is not presented as the absence of suffering, but as the determination to preserve one's identity, convictions and hope despite it. Yosmara's story reminds us that the freedom to think and choose can come at an immense human cost.
Artistic reference
Dignity takes Joaquín Sorolla’s Clotilde García del Castillo (1890) as a compositional point of departure, drawing on the sitter’s position, the arrangement of the figure and the intimacy of the original portrait.
By placing Yosmara within this visual tradition, the work shifts the social and historical context of the image. A composition associated with a nineteenth-century portrait becomes a framework for the experience of a woman living in twenty-first-century Spain.
The reference is therefore neither a copy nor a nostalgic quotation. It reassigns the language of historical portraiture to a subject whose personal history is rarely represented within that canon.
Clotilde García del Castillo
Joaquín Sorolla, 1890
Creative process
Dignity in the artist's studio
Exhibition history
The Westin Valencia
Valencia, Spain · 2023
Botanical Garden of the University of Valencia
Valencia, Spain · 2024
Former Town Hall of Bétera
Bétera, Spain · 2024
Galerie Portraits
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