In Trace, artist Yexin Yang fixes a striking and confrontational image onto the canvas: the face of a Guatemalan woman pressed deeply beneath the sole of a man’s shoe. This frozen moment is both the manifestation of trauma and the beginning of resistance. Under Yang’s brush, the shoe sole is no longer merely a mark of movement; it becomes a metaphor for the entanglement of history and power. The imprint upon the woman’s face seems to narrate obscured histories, suppressed voices, and the enduring, invisible scars embedded within the collisions of gender, colonialism, and civilization.
