Jamie Lee Curtis put her platform behind Cuban graphic artist Idania del Río this week. She reposted del Río’s announcement for a new work, “Rubber Nails,” with a direct four-word caption: “WOMEN NEED TO SUPPORT WOMEN.”
The piece stands on its own. “Rubber Nails” is a 1/1 original. Only one exists. Del Río created it in collaboration with nail studio Luly Salón, applying gel nail product to paper in a claw-shaped formation. It’s the first time she’s used any medium other than serigraphy ink in her work.
For an artist whose practice is built on printmaking, that shift is significant. Serigraphy is a precise, labor-intensive craft. Gel nail product is a softer, more fluid medium. It’s applied with tools designed for fingernails rather than paper. Trusting that material, and a collaborator from outside her usual discipline, pushed del Río somewhere her previous work hasn’t been. “It’s my first time putting something else than ink on paper and the result is really beautiful,” she wrote in announcing the piece.
The design carries meaning beyond its texture. Each color in the claw represents a different stage of the feminist fight. Del Río didn’t label each color or provide a key. The piece works as a whole rather than as a diagram. The claw shape does its own arguing. Nails pulled together into a single formation, it reads as something collective and purposeful.
“Rubber Nails” is currently available through a public auction at clandestina.co. Bidding closes Friday, June 26 at 9am EST. To participate, visit clandestina.co and navigate to the Auction section. From there, sign in or create an account and place a bid. Del Río also encouraged people to share the link with someone who might care. The original announcement ran in both English and Spanish.
Curtis’s amplification brings significant reach to what was already a compelling project. The actress, known for the Halloween franchise and decades of public feminist advocacy, has a long record of supporting women’s creative work. Her repost extended “Rubber Nails” to an audience far beyond del Río’s existing circle. That kind of visibility matters for a piece with such a specific cultural and political charge.
Del Río works primarily through clandestina.co, a platform centered on Cuban design and culture. Serigraphy, specifically screen-printing on paper, is her home medium and the technique most associated with her visual identity. “Rubber Nails” steps outside that into new material and a genuinely different collaboration.
Something more may follow. Del Río mentioned that friends have been pushing for a small silkscreen poster run based on the piece. “It may be a next step for this,” she wrote. A serigraphy version would bring the image back to her primary medium. It would also make the work available to more people after the auction wraps. Nothing’s confirmed yet.
The auction closes Friday, June 26 at 9am EST at clandestina.co.
