Hello Cela and welcome to NotRandomArt. The current issue is revolving around the problem of communication and identity. Is there any particular way you would describe your identity as an artist but also as a human being in dynamically changing, unstable times? In particular, does your cultural substratum/identity form your aesthetics?
I am a Brazilian woman artist living in New York. The tropical environment and the typical vibrant energies from my country influences my work. The cultural difference activated when I moved to New York, constantly bring about personal memories through my work in a way to keep me connected with my home. All of these are part of my identity as an artist and is shown through my paintings.
We definitely love the way you question the nature of reality and representation, unveiling the visual feature of information you developed through an effective non linear narrative that establish direct relations with the viewers: German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? And in particular how do you conceive the narrative for your works?
What I consider art has always been related to not only psychological but medium aspects as well. In my practice, I never plan any work. I start a painting by doing a single random brush stroke. After that first movement, I let the unconscious and ideas flow inside that canvas. The process continues by balancing and creating tension in specific areas, exactly the way it happens naturally in life. The figures are always related to either daily life observation or from my personal background. By doing that I create images that are both figurative and abstract, leaving space for the viewer's interpretation.
Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about your identity as a participant in the visual culture?
I couldn’t specify an artwork, but a few artists that are important for me. De Kooning, Joan Mitchel, Cecily Brown, Amy Sillman, and Sue Williams.
What is the role of technique in your practice? In particular are there any constraints or rules that you follow when creating?
I am a controlled and methodical person. The process behind the first brush stroke is repetitive and full of “rules”. Putting gesso on the canvas, using gloves, preparing the color palette, choosing an inspiring playlist, make sure there is a bottle of water around me, but when I start painting, I let all the control behind. That is one of the reasons I love and identify with the abstract expressionists.
How do you see the relationship between emotional and intellectual perception of your work? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?
I don't want the viewer to have any specific perception; I just want to have a dialogue. I want they to connect their experiences with my work, and if that happens, the dialogue comes naturally. Formally, the immersive nature is an important part for me. That is one of the reasons why I like to work on big canvas, and why I use different scales on my work. That way the viewer can discover different elements depending on the distance that they take.
We would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?.
Talking about paintings, never. If I considered the audience reception interfere my decisions on my process, I wouldn’t be true to myself. No one can please everyone. But the few times that I made installations, I have considered it, to achieve the engage that I wanted.
Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Cela. Finally, would you like to tell us, readers, something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?
de-identify myself, by losing my roots, my culture, I would be very happy. Unfortunately the human being does'nt choose the place where he is born. He grows up in a society that automatically identifies, through education, culture, family... More than ever I think it's more important to go on a way of self-knowledge with the aim to meet “the other”.. This other without which we can not exist. It's the same for the artist. It is more important for me to be focused on my practice than to try to define it according to esthetic criteria of identification. It's probably the reason i like to remember the painter Matisse who said or wrote that an artist must never be prisoner of himself, prisoner of a style, prisoner of a reputation.
Would you like to tell us something about your background? Could you talk a little about experiences that has influence the way you currently relate yourself to your artworks?
All my way is influenced by encounterings.
It began by the meeting with my professor of literature at school. More than giving French or Literature classes, she brought us to discover texts, movies, plays, visual artworks and to think about on what we saw or read.. Thanks to her that I met Pierre Vincke, a theatredirector who was worjink in the tradition of Grotowski ... Both of them have led me to go to theater school. In this school I had meetings. Meetings with artists but also and especially human beings that made me discover. I always need o discover rather than to master a practice. It's probably the reason my encounter with Monica Klingler and Boris Nieslony was decisive for me and led me on the path of Performance Art which is a form still difficult to define. Each performance artist has a different definition of what it is...
Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about race and ethnic identity in visual culture?
No I don't have a specific artwork that has influenced my artistic practise but many.
I'm influenced by some philsophers as well as poets or musicians or dancers or visual artists but also by some places or landscapes or atmospheres ... For some years, I was used for example to go to India where I was used to follow some traditionnal muscians or to learn bharatanatyam and practice vipassana meditation... Of course this experience has impacted my art work.... This brought me to think and work differently... My experience in India brought me to discover traditionnal strong art and paradoxally to the way of Performance Art. But there I see one common point: to make no separation between art and life and to be here and now, without projection on the future.
It's difficult for me to speak about race and ethnic identity. But I can say that today we miss more and more this notion of “to be here and now” which is more present in some cultures ... By practising Performance Art, it's my way to be connected to this way of thinking. And even in this field actually it's more and more difficult. The society and the art world brings us more and more to plan in advance, to define our work, more than to do. Just to do. To do what we deeply need.
And of course, my encountering with Black Market International and later the notion of Open Source or Open session via PAErsche have also a big impact on my work. When we go on that, each of us perform by sharing time and space but without trying to convince each other on some common way. This is for me a wonderfull way how we can meet each other, regardless of our origin, our race or our “identity”...
Many of your works carry an autobiographical message. Since you transform your experiences into your artwork, we are curious, what is the role of memory in your artistic productions? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.
My memory is clearly a starting point to create. I don't have any autobiographical message. I use my personnal experience ( what I feel , what I see, what I learn, what I ear...) to work. It's a motor or a material. I'm not able to paint, so I can't do something with red or white or yellow or black colors. All I have is life, a body alive. And I need to do something with that...
My sensation about life sometimes is too intense then I need to transform this intensity in some action. Some artistic action... If people can take something from this action this is great... but I don't want to give them “a specific message” or to control the translation of my experience.