Samanta Rched Abugauch

Courtesy of the artist and ARC.

First Place Animals in the 18th International ARC Salon® online exhibition;

17th & 18th International ARC Salon® Exhibition at Sotheby's New York, July 17-27, 2026.

Art Renewal Center, International Realism: 17th & 18th International ARC Salons (Woodbridge, UK: ACC Art Books Ltd, 2026), p. 227, illustrated.

Felices Por Siempre (Happily Ever After) is a large-format triptych where a group of storks— an animal associated with the arrival of babies— takes center stage as a symbolic figure of command, desire, and rupture. Some mate, others build nests, some fight or leave. The scene oscillates between the ritualistic and the animalistic. In the landscape, there are eggs, nests, and intimate elements— such as women's underwear—that allude to the domestic, the reproductive, and the lost. The work challenges the promise of a “happy ending” from a feminine and psychic perspective. The storks, solemn and vulnerable, are witnesses, victims, and accomplices of this uncertain scene. It emerged during a time of personal mourning, when the artist experienced a loss that reshaped her desires and symbols. Happily Ever After is not a statement but a question. Classical painting in service of a dense, contradictory, and contemporary symbolic world.

This work has been stretched on stretcher bars for exhibition. Following the conclusion of the show, it will be dismantled and rolled for the ease and safety of transportation. The new owner will be responsible for restretching the canvases at their preferred location.