Lucía Lamata at Escala: the body, in black and white

At Escala House, the first impression is still familiar: coffee, light, a certain spatial calm. But this time, the walls carry something more distilled.

Lucía Lamata’s latest exhibition strips everything back to black and white. No distraction, no palette to soften or dramatize... just contrast, texture, and form. A deliberate reduction that brings her focus into sharper relief: women, the body, and what it holds.

“El cuerpo como territorio de memoria y poder. Una mirada que transforma la herida en belleza.”

The premise is explicit, but the images are not illustrative. Lamata doesn’t document wounds: she traces their presence.

Working in monochrome, she shifts attention toward the surface of the image: skin becomes landscape, light becomes structure. Every detail feels intentional—creases, marks, shadows that don’t conceal but articulate.

The body here isn’t framed as an object of desire or even identity. It’s positioned as a site: something lived in, marked, and redefined over time.

The absence of color isn’t aesthetic nostalgia in Lucia's work, it’s functional beauty. 

By removing it, Lamata compresses the image into essentials:

Contrast that defines volume

Grain that suggests time

Light that reveals without fully exposing

There’s a tactile quality to the work. You don’t just see the images—you register them. The tonal range moves from soft grays to deep blacks, creating a rhythm that feels almost physical.

In this context, black and white becomes more than a visual choice: it becomes a way of holding tension. Between vulnerability and control. Between exposure and protection.

There’s no excess here. No unnecessary framing, no narrative overload.

Just bodies, rendered in black and white, carrying memory without explanation.

Lamata doesn’t ask for interpretation. She constructs a visual language where the female body exists as both archive and agent, marked, but not diminished.

A territory, not a symbol. 

Lucía is the first artist to take place a month-long residence program within Escala. The pictures below do no justice to Lucia's work, so be sure to check it out in person, if you can and enjoy some great coffee while you're at it. 

Lucia Lamata's IG. 

Escala Madrid's IG.