Lives and works in Rotterdam.
In her work process, the metaphor of a non-stop domino effect, where things and contents are constantly moving each other, is recurrent. Navas tries to stay away of the idea of a zero point of creation, thus she questions terms strongly related to art making, as revolution, creativity or authorship. For her, art is a dialogue with strangers, but this dialogue does not only resonate to the direct participants of the artistic experience, but creates also a wider echo. One of the main questions in her work is how art is perceived and transformed outside the art context and what are the meeting points between different disciplines as ethnology / art / design / decoration and the relation between high and popular culture. She is interested in moments where these encounters, transformation, absorption and imitation are especially present. This is how in her work a wide variety of themes such as adolescence, forgery, amateur art, song covers or costumes become examples around the idea of willing to copy and to possess.
Navas often works in several series in parallel, which then connect in an installation situation unfolding the conceptual relations those series have to each other. Aiming to be consequent on her focus on transformation, she understands the exhibition situation as an ‘essay’ moment and not a definite one. This means, the works are understood as modules, which can be reused for new pieces, reappear in other constellations, turn from artwork to display, or adopt a different meaning each time they are shown.
She attended the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe, where she graduated as a Meisterschülerin (MA) with Franz Ackermann.
She then was a resident at De Ateliers Amsterdam and has done many residency programs including Vila Sul-Goethe Institute, Salvador de Bahia; FLORA Ars+Natura (through a Mondriaan Fonds grant), Bogota; Charco-Granero (edition curated by Manuela Moscoso), León, Guanajuato; Foundation Fiminco, Romainville-Paris.
In 2022 she received the illySustainArt during ARCOMadrid; for 2020 she was granted the NN Group Art Award (Netherlands) and in 2018 the Kunstfonds Germany and the Kunstakademie Karlsruhe awarded her with the Kalinowski Prize. She has received the fellowships of Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg and the Landesgraduiertenförderung Baden-Württemberg.
Her work has been widely exhibited in Latin America and Europe, in places such as: Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden; Galerie der Stadt, Sindelfingen; P/////AKT, Platform for contemporary Art, Amsterdam; El cuarto de máquinas, México City; Cobra Museum, Amstelveen; Nest, The Hague; Sperling, Munich, among others.
Her work has been published in the books: I had to think of you / Ich musste an dich denken, A fake crocodile can make you cry real tears and Tiene palabras, ella (along with the artist Sarina Scheidegger).
Her work belongs in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Kadist Collection in San Francisco and Paris, and Phillips/Yuyito in Mexico City, among others.
