Santoro proceeds in series, repeating similar gestures to formalize unpredictable and ancestral structures and forms, always linked to female representation but taking on multiple and polymorphic appearances. After she worked with appropriation, photography, and sculpture for about 20 years, the simple process of painting seemed a natural tool to continue to explore this theme.

The Blood Roses series develops the flower as a feminine symbol connected to the female lunar cycle. The flowers have bilateral symmetry, raising the theme of the double (ongoing in her art since the early 1970s) and standing as a metaphor for her relationship with the Other. For these paintings, Santoro used tempera on colored paper, producing thick, deep, and intense compositions.

The Femaleness works are watercolors on paper that depict women in movement (seemingly dancing), synthesizing a sedimentation of centuries of female representations. Their transversal references come from Santoro’s vast and long research on the representation of the female figure in Western iconography. Beyond its feminist position, the strength of her work lies in how she addresses the history of representation. Santoro is questioning what and who is represented. And how do we see it? Her work offers multidimensional and spectral metaphors.