| Emotional Art
Student Daniel Beltrán
- Enters JA Class of 2022
- Universidad de Guanajuato
- Visual Arts
Sometimes art isn't just painted: it's cried about, engraved, torn into pieces, and put back together.
This is the story of Daniel, a young artist who found in art something more than a calling: a way to believe in himself again.
Between printmaking, ceramics, photography, and digital work, Daniel has transformed his deepest emotions—sadness, loss, fear—into pieces that speak with strength and sensitivity.
During a difficult time, the loss of someone very close led him to experience thoughts that made him doubt even his worth as a human being.
"I started to overthink whether I'm a good person or a bad person... it was a very dark moment."
Art saved me
I want to cry and I don't want to hear from anyone, but I want to do something with my feelings and express them.
"Art still reminds me of that past, but it's part of the challenge."
"Sometimes feelings overwhelm you so much that they make you live in the past and disconnect you from the present."
“No matter how small things are, they are valuable.”
The engraving
In Daniel's case, printmaking became a way to translate pain into image, to give form to silence.
"Art helped me give visual meaning to my feelings. Printmaking was a way to cry with my hands."
In each print, there is a fragment of himself that dares to emerge, to occupy space, to speak. His works don't seek perfection, they seek truth.
"You don't have to be perfect, you just have to be yourself... Printmaking helped me confront them and capture them."
Sculpture and ceramics
Are practices that fully involve the body: hands, gaze... Patience.
Daniel works not only with clay, but with ideas, fragility, the weight of the past, and the possibility of molding something new.
"It helped me accept various parts of myself and preserve the best."
Barbie Puñal
It's part of a series in which Daniel addresses his childhood as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. The work questions the gender roles imposed from childhood and the prejudices that transform innocence into something dangerous.
"I grew up afraid of being a boy who liked to play house, wear makeup, and have dolls. Barbie Puñal talks about that: how stereotypes can make you feel ashamed of being yourself."
Barbie Puñal is a symbol of resistance, a reminder of the symbolic violence that many children experience for not conforming to binary molds. But she is also a statement of strength, a doll armed with a truth: being different is not a threat, it's a way to be free.
Daniel represents a new generation of artists who not only create, but also question, heal, and propose.
Know more about Daniel's work
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