Winter kept us warm

Watch a short reel about these works:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJ9QdHGs1bK/

Cecilia Bonilla’s body of work Winter Kept Us Warm continues her exploration of the female image through strategies of appropriation and poetic disruption. Created during the waning days of winter, these collages merge fragments from vintage discarded men’s magazines with imagery from nature encyclopaedias — transforming once-objectified female bodies into surreal hybrid figures cloaked in foliage, dwarfed by insects, or obscured by branches. Working with a magnetic board, Bonilla assembles her compositions slowly and intuitively, embracing collage as a medium uniquely suited to ambivalence — where conflicting ideas can inhabit the same frame. The title, drawn from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, speaks to a paradoxical refuge found in stillness and retreat: “Winter kept us warm,” Eliot writes, suggesting that numbness can be a form of protection. In these works, Bonilla similarly invokes a quiet resistance:

“I started making these collages towards the end of winter. I felt apprehensive about accepting the onset of spring; the idea of spending more time outside meant exposing myself to the world again, and I had found comfort in the stillness and reclusiveness of winter.” Cecilia Bonilla, 2025

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins.”
— The Waste Land, V. What the Thunder Said

These works are available to acquire through:
tom@opendoors.gallery
+44 (0)7769922824