From the beginning of her career, Raquel expressed a preoccupation with what she called “the dark source,” a realm that is not easily accessed but one rich with knowledge and wisdom. This is what she said about her approach:
I am drawn to spaces of silence in which my work can transcend its materiality, where I can access a primordial source from which ideas and inspiration come. My practice emerges from that source and attempts to enact that emergence. My fascination with the undefinable nature of existence has spurred my lifelong exploration of what I call the "dark source," which embodies concealed aspects of existence lying behind the appearance of things, thoughts, and language. Through my work, I seek to reveal that which is concealed emerging into view. I try to make the invisible visible.
I believe that Raquel’s affinity for these dark spheres was in her DNA, in a predilection for rumination, for needing to dig below the surface of things. But it was also rooted in her Jewish ancestor’s history of persecution; her imprisonment in Argentina; philosophy, like Plato’s allegory of the cave; and places she sought out, like the inner sanctums of temples she visited in India As she says, “Everything I witnessed left a mark; I was open to everything, I absorbed everything.”
—Elizabeth Ferrer
