MINAS (Daniel Gómez Freile, b.1994, Quito, Ecuador) is currently based in London. He continues to develop his artistic practice in his studio, where he focuses on creating embroidered abstractions that seek to establish a new visual language. His practice spans digital collage, embroidery and sculpture. He holds a BFA from McGill University and an MA in Print from the Royal College of Art. His work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Ecuador, Canada and the United Kingdom. His solo exhibitions have been presented at Carla Alvarez Galería (Ecuador, 2021 and 2023) and Never Apart (Canada, 2020). Selected group exhibitions include Joseph Fine Art (UK, 2024), Swanfall Art Galleries (UK, 2024), the Royal College of Art (UK, 2024), the Muñoz Mariño Museum (Ecuador, 2023), Imaginar (Ecuador, 2026) and Punto Rojo (Ecuador, 2026)
MINAS’s work is characterised by an excessive, lush and baroque visual language. Images, ideas and symbolic associations accumulate, transforming personal experience into dense compositions charged with emotion. In his earlier digital collage practice, images drawn from the internet, cinema, history, world religions, manga and popular culture were absorbed and reconfigured to form an evolving self-portrait. In his embroidered works, thread, fabric and the repetitive act of stitching become carriers of emotion and time. Love, desire, attachment, anxiety and the boundaries between the self and others run throughout his practice. His understanding of identity is transnational and deterritorialised—not rooted in a single place, but shaped by the internet, cinema, literature and global visual culture. Through the accumulation of images and the gradual process of embroidery, he gives form to emotions that are difficult to contain. His practice uses images as a way of thinking about the self, while the act of making becomes a structure that holds him together