These faces are not portraits. The initial image –sometimes based on friends and acquaintances, sometimes based on found images- is only the starting point. Gaining in complexity, these drawings move further and further away from their source material until the figure eventually becomes a new self, made by the artist. These archetypes-of-sorts encourage supposition about origin, race and nationality and in doing so invite us to consider our own complex, and often unexamined, concepts of identity.

The evasiveness of the medium of charcoal, with its temporal, ever-changing potential, mirrors beautifully the ambiguity of the heads that represent both the person that has been and the one that has come into being.  

Bustos completed her 5 year fine art degree at the Prilidiano Pueyrredon Art College, Buenos Aires, in 1990 and moved to London in 1993, where she has lived and worked ever since, to study at the Slade School of Art.

Her varied bodies of work include collage, painting, large-scale charcoals on canvas and installation/interactive pieces which are regularly included in group exhibitions in London, Argentina and Germany. She is a regular contributor to La Tundra Revista, the cultural and global events Spanish language magazine of London, where she writes on the arts and urbanism.