Ana Drucker
What’s your name and where are you from/based?
My name is Ana Drucker. I’m from Mexico City and currently based in Barcelona.
Can you describe in a few words what you do?
I make objects and sculptures. I work with many materials, but lately I’ve been focused on glass, ceramics, and more recently, silver jewelry. I’m drawn to materials that are shaped and transformed by fire—things that can melt, fuse, or transform under heat. Fire is both unpredictable and alchemical; it alters materials in ways I can’t fully control, and that’s my current obsession. I want to melt stuff or transform it through fire.
What first pulled you toward the strange and the grotesque? Was it a moment, an image, a material?
I think stories pulled me in first. I’ve always been fascinated by the paranormal, true crime, magic, diseases, body deformations, anything that exists within the limits of what we can understand. I love when reality feels uncertain—when it blurs into something we call weird or grotesque or surreal just because it escapes easy explanation. That feeling of not knowing exactly what you’re seeing or how to name it, that discomfort, that distortion of reality—that’s what pulls me in.
Your work often feels like it’s alive, or recently alive. How do you think about the presence of ‘life’ in your objects?
Thank you—that’s very meaningful to me. I think of life as a process more than a fixed state. It involves change, decay, growth, error, even death. It’s always in motion. I try to reflect that in my work by embracing transformation, mistakes, experiments and imperfection. Fire plays a big role in that—it warps, melts, fuses, scars. It leaves traces of what once was, and is also capable of destroying but bringing new life.
You work with heat, breakage, mutation—do you ever think of your process as a kind of controlled destruction?
I try not to focus on control or results— I like the unpredictable and the surprise of not really knowing what you are doing. A lot of what I make comes from accidents, from forcing materials that don’t usually go together to coexist. When sometime that doesn’t work I destroy the pieces, and save the materials for later, a lot of discarded materials end up being used in other experiments, so I think destruction is also part of creating new things.
You speak about materials exposing what we don’t fully understand. What’s something you’re still trying to understand yourself, through making?
I’m trying to understand how materials behave—what they’re made of, how they react or transform when combined with others. I’m also interested in how we react to things that are considered strange, gross, unsettling. I have a high tolerance for the eerie and the grotesque, and I’m drawn to things that feel inexplicable. I think I’m trying to get there with my work—to create objects that are magnetic but also a little unsettling. I’m not fully there yet, but that’s where I’m headed.
Is there a material you’ve always wanted to work with—something you haven’t quite figured out how to use yet?
Yes! I really want to cast metals like aluminum or iron, and I’d love to learn large-scale glass work, either casting or glassblowing. I’m interested in scaling things up, and those materials feel like the next step.
Has someone ever offered a meaning or function for one of your pieces that completely shifted how you saw it?
Yes! My last series started as abstract sculptures, and a friend mentioned they could work as bookends. I tried selling them that way, and they started moving quickly. That really shifted my thinking—I realized that people connect differently when an object has a potential use. There’s often a distance between people and “art,” but design feels more accessible. It was surprising, but I also loved that some people still insisted they were sculptures, not bookends. That tension—between use and art—made me explore that series for quite a while. It taught me that meaning isn’t fixed; it can evolve through context.
What’s one thing, completely unrelated to work, that you always set time aside for?
Cooking. I love it. If everything else fails, I’ll just open a dinner spot somewhere. Also, walking my dog— there has to be time for her.
Outside of your practice, is there an object you keep close?
My pillow, always. And my altar—it’s made of stones and small objects I’ve collected over the years, every time I have moved those things have a new place in my home.
Have you ever used a material that is considered eerie in itself?
Yes—I once used real teeth in a music video, and I’ve used bones to create glazes. I’m obsessed with teeth and bones, and currently I’m trying to make a jewelry collection from these teeth I’ve been saving.
Do you see your pieces as characters?
Not yet, but my next project will explore this. I’m starting to think about the relationship plants and insects create with the environment—how they move, survive, and transform. I want to build sculptures based on this capacities.
