In My Art Tools we look into 2 artists' tool box: what is their fetish instrument? Let's get technical! The artist's hand will guide you through the passion of following one’s vision, the pleasures of trusting an instinct, and the resilience it takes to work creatively. Hosted by Joana P. R. Neves.
The guests: Ana María Caballero and Alexandra Jabre.
What you get from this episode: Have you ever thought about the stuff art is made of? Wondered how artists make what you see in museums and galleries? How they train their hand, eye, body? Art making revelations, art techniques, lessons in resilience, art philosophies, spirituality and ethical questions.
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Host & Founder
Exhibitionistas is hosted by Joana P. R. Neves, a seasoned curator and writer with over 20 years of experience in the contemporary visual art field. She loves demystifying contemporary art by blending art history, theory, and personal reflections to reveal how art can uncover views on today's hottest topics as much as on everlasting existential questions.
For collaborations, text commissions and inquiries: joana@exhibitionistaspodcast.com
00:00:00
I've been one of the early people who have been recording
00:00:03
their poems, or minting them as it's called on the blockchain.
00:00:07
What makes the most sense to me is that these visitations or
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messages or dreams may just be my consciousness existing on
00:00:15
several levels. My name is Anna Maria Caballero.
00:00:19
I'm originally from Colombia, but I currently live in Madrid,
00:00:23
Spain. My name is Alex Java, I live and
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work in London, but my parents are Lebanese.
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Welcome to the second episode of My Art Tools, where two artists
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reveal what their favorite art tool is, which leads us straight
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into their practice exhibition. Nestors is an independent
00:00:42
podcast created and hosted by me, Joanna Pia Neves.
00:00:46
Because we're all both actors and spectators of art and life.
00:00:51
If you're new here, you have a whole catalog of episodes to
00:00:56
enjoy. Discover them at your own pace.
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Thank you, Joanna, for having me.
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It's wonderful to be on your podcast, of which I've been a
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fan for a long time. I am a poet.
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I'm the author of eight books in both Spanish and English, and
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I'm also a performance sculpture installation artist.
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I like to take my poems beyond the page.
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Hello, thank you for having me Joanna.
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I work mostly with watercolours. Recently I've actually started
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looking into different materials.
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So I've been doing sculptures like resin sculptures, 3D
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printed sculptures, bronze sculptures, Cyana types.
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So I am going towards slightly more costly materials, but I
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found recently that actually different mediums can reach
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people in different ways. I was an undergraduate at
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Harvard and I was the only student in my concentration,
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which was Romance studies. So it's a combination of French,
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Spanish and Italian, literature and history theory, etcetera.
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And I was really close with my professors because I was the
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only student again in my grade. I didn't want to follow in their
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past as much as they encouraged me because I realized being an
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academic was really just reading criticism all day.
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I didn't want to write books about books.
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I wanted to write books. I wanted to write the novels, I
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wanted to write the poems, the plays, etcetera.
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I didn't want to write the literary theory about the poem.
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And so it just seems to me like I, I wasn't right for academia
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and I went off into the workforce, you know, and just
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found work that would be sustainable for my life and, and
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interesting and, and aligned with my, with my also sort of
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moral compass. And I, you know, lasted for
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total of 10 months in the finance industry, said goodbye
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and never went back and started working in government, started
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working in media, started working in all sorts of other
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endeavours. And then I, I began publishing
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seriously. The first book I ever wrote was
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actually in Spanish. And it won a national poetry
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prize in Colombia. I was the first woman to to
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receive that honor. But I, I really credit my
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writing path to being a kid and reading a book a night and just
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going through books, you know, like eating them, devouring
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them, literally consuming them. And I think that that's really
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where writers are made, is in within the folds of another.
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Book In my 20s I had a different career and so at the end of my
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20s I went back to school and I got my MFA and I began my career
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as a full time artist. I'm really attracted to bronze
00:03:46
sculptures at the moment, but I, I, they're gold plated.
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So it's really the gold that interests me because the gold,
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when I grew up, before my parents started collecting
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contemporary art, a house was full of like Byzantine icons.
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So I grew up basically with gold circles and a lot of this kind
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of divinity. That's a really strong
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connection, the Byzantine icons in my work today.
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It took me a while to realize that that's the connection
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there. But yes, it's the gold
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sculptures that I like so, but also the cyanotypes.
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Why? Because that Prussian blue is,
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is exactly the reason I use the blue.
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It's this soothing, calming, very pleasing blue.
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It's hard to say you don't like it.
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It's, it's a universal blue. And so that's why I like
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cyanotypes as well. So so the the mediums I am
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exploring are somehow linked to my current painting practice,
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whether it's gold circles or blue prints.
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And I do hope to something I really want to explore is
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animation because a lot of my images are trying to tell a
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story and there is a storyline and there is a storyboard and
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it's not very clear with random sized paintings.
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So one day I also hope to go down that route and explore that
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as a medium. How did Anna Maria and Alex
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navigate a life that didn't logically lead to arts making,
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but which also carried A deeply seated vocation calling talent
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whatever you want to call it? I did my undergrad studies and
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then I went into the workforce and then when I was older,
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actually living in Miami, I had my first child and I was
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pregnant with my second. And I decided I wanted to get an
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MFA in poetry and I wanted to combine it with an MFA in Fine
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Arts because I really felt, Joanna, that I was an artist and
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I wanted to take poetry in two different realms.
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And there was actually no communication between the fine
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art and the English or creative writing department.
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There was no way of of doing both.
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They didn't even know what to start, you know, who to call,
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like what number to dial. They had no idea on either side.
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So I stuck with poetry, always feeling that I could that I
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needed to take my work into the physical realm in different ways
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and then actually came through the digital.
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So I started digitizing my work when social media came around to
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share my poems, my published work as animations on social
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media. And through that, I started
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creating a community and some interest.
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And at least, you know, I was getting responses from people
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for to my work, which felt quite fulfilling versus sometimes
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publishing, you know, in these literary journals, you really
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don't know who's reading your work, if anyone at all.
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It's, it can be a little bit anti climatic at times when you
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work so hard to get published. And then there's all this, this
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like silence afterwards. And so I, I was really excited
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to see this energy and then I read about blockchain and how
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digital assets could now be traded.
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And so I said, great, I will take these poems that I've
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already digitized and share them on these platforms.
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So one of the ways that I've been bringing my poems into the
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world is through blockchain. And I've been one of the early
00:07:15
people who have been recording their poems or minting them, as
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it's called, on the blockchain. And I used several blockchains
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to do this. I'd love to work with Tezos,
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with Bitcoin, with ether. I'm chain agnostic, as they say,
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and I was invited to be part of a Sotheby's curated exhibition.
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And for this one, I presented a poem, a villanelle, which is a
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very traditional format of of a poem.
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For example, Dylan Thomas, Do not go quietly into that, that
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dark night. That's the Villanelle.
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And my poem called Chord was recorded onto the Bitcoin
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blockchain and it became the first poem ever sold by a living
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poet by Sotheby's. Of course, Sotheby's had sold
00:08:06
manuscripts and folios by long gone poets, Walt Walt Whitman's
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notebooks, Emily Dickinson's, you know, document
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documentation, but they hadn't sold a poem by a living poet
00:08:20
until mine. And so that just gives you a bit
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of an idea of how separate really the the poetry ecosystem
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has become from the contemporary art world.
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When you when you think about how crazy it is that that that's
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the first one. And actually, if you go on the
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Sotheby's site and see what they have available, at least when I
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did the last time, the only documents or poems or or or
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written material that they had by a living author was actually
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a first edition set of Harry Potter.
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I remember calling myself an artist when I was very young,
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and I personally believe that I've been an artist for many
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centuries and it's a talent that I've been developing across
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lifetimes. So I think I knew exactly who I
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was and what I was going to do when I was born.
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And then there came a journey of authenticity, which way you have
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to push back against expectations and pressures from
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society and family and things like that.
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But I never had a doubt in my mind of what I should do and who
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I was. It was more about not caring
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about other people and that was the real journey I went on.
00:09:36
How to not seek approval from anyone else and how to be as
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authentic as possible without compromising.
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So it was very simple for me. I, I, I really don't think I
00:09:49
learnt to paint a portrait in this lifetime with no undergrad
00:09:53
training. I think I've been developing
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that for a really long time. I think it's, it's a lot of
00:09:59
people carried talents and traumas.
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I think we carry over our talents and our traumas.
00:10:04
I did have a great granny who painted and her name was
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Alexandra so, but she was the only person in my family who
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showed interest in art. And she took it up later in her
00:10:16
life and she started painting and she painted a lot of
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landscapes in Lebanon. She painted a lot of Lebanese
00:10:25
women. Yeah.
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I think I was like 2 when she passed.
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She was my great grandma. But I find it very interesting
00:10:30
that I have her name and I, I, I feel like almost maybe I'm
00:10:34
realizing her dream that couldn't happen at that time
00:10:37
because women didn't have jobs. And then over time, over 20
00:10:40
years and now I'm 40I realized that the answers are all inside
00:10:47
of you and there is no one outside of you that can help you
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really like they can help you really understand what it is
00:10:55
you're trying to solve because that's not their experience.
00:10:59
So I've been, I've seen every time I go to a new country, I go
00:11:02
see a healer or a psychic or a medium.
00:11:05
I must have seen dozens and dozens of these people.
00:11:07
I've tried every scientific and non scientific route to be more
00:11:13
present here and if I've learnt anything is that when you try
00:11:17
and explain things people can only respond to you from their
00:11:21
experience. So what I've learnt over time is
00:11:25
you know all that, you have all your answers, you know what what
00:11:29
you should do. It's all about more trusting
00:11:32
your intuition and your gut and trusting yourself.
00:11:36
It's kind of like a self love journey of like why do you think
00:11:40
someone else knows better for you, what's good for you?
00:11:44
It's interesting. But what are Anna Maria and
00:11:48
Alex's tools of choice? What is their favorite art tool?
00:11:53
I actually brought you the journals that I filled up this
00:11:57
year so far, and that for me remains my weapon of choice.
00:12:05
The paper journal where you can not only write your thoughts,
00:12:10
but start gathering entire books, exhibition ideas,
00:12:14
questions to self. And so I, I really wanted to,
00:12:18
when you invited me, Joanna, to this podcast, I really wanted to
00:12:22
exalt a tool that many might think is, you know, of a, of a
00:12:28
different era as a continuously relevant source of inspiration,
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planification and synthesisation of ideas.
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Really, ideas are nothing until we write them down and then turn
00:12:43
them into reality. Well, this one my daughter made
00:12:46
for me at a little shop where you could make all sorts of fun
00:12:53
things with glue guns. They're all pretty small.
00:12:55
They have that in common. So I like them to be light
00:12:59
because I usually transport my laptop around and I, you know,
00:13:05
might have to take care of my back at some point.
00:13:08
So I try to have smaller, smaller notebooks.
00:13:12
And other than that, I actually kind of enjoy the moment when 1
00:13:17
is coming to an end and I don't yet have the next one.
00:13:21
And I get to pick it out and I kind of let life dictate which
00:13:25
one it will be. You know, usually I encounter
00:13:27
one at a museum store. So they might have a little bit
00:13:30
of a logo on it, a branding, and it'll be a memory.
00:13:33
But I try to keep them light is my my biggest concern.
00:13:37
Actually, the one that has all the toys that my daughter made
00:13:41
for me, they're all plastic. So it's the heaviest one.
00:13:43
It's quite heavy compared to the rest.
00:13:47
I'm usually writing a novel or a book.
00:13:50
I'm writing one right now in in note form, so from start to end
00:13:57
it's the new material that I'm writing.
00:13:59
And then I also have a whole section that goes from back to
00:14:02
front and that is usually filled with ideas for exhibitions and
00:14:08
note taking more aligned with my art practice.
00:14:12
And I do like the notebooks to be lined actually.
00:14:14
So if it's in my notebook, I know that it's somewhere.
00:14:17
And from there, the next step, of course, is taking it into the
00:14:22
digitized space, into the word processor, right?
00:14:25
A Google Doc, Microsoft Word, etcetera, a note in in the
00:14:31
laptop. And when it starts becoming a
00:14:33
manuscript type form or a sketched out exhibition
00:14:38
proposal, it's getting closer to reality.
00:14:42
So there is a process of of, you know, projects, ideas, dreams,
00:14:48
going from mind to hand to paper and then to screen where they
00:14:54
are shared with the world to find a final form.
00:14:57
For many years it was a typewriter, Before that it had
00:15:01
to be done by hand. But I think there is this
00:15:05
formality, right of, of taking it from the handwritten page
00:15:10
into the word processor, whatever form of word processor
00:15:13
you choose, because that's really where it starts to very
00:15:17
visually also take shape and where you can rearrange
00:15:21
paragraphs where, you know, spelling and grammar come into
00:15:26
fruition. And in ways that they can, you
00:15:29
know, when it's a private journal, you you can omit
00:15:32
punctuation, you can misspell words and not even, you know, go
00:15:35
back to correct. But here there is this formality
00:15:39
where there is an intention to share it with others.
00:15:44
And I really think that that's what separates the notebook
00:15:48
where it's this private form of brainstorming note taking where
00:15:52
you're typically not sharing your notebooks with with other
00:15:57
people. You know, you're, you're
00:15:58
certainly not sharing it with an editor who's going to read them
00:16:01
and publish them. That's just not the way it's
00:16:03
done. But when you take it to the word
00:16:05
processor, to the screen, there is an intention of taking the
00:16:09
work to somebody else to be considered.
00:16:13
And so there is a level of Polish that needs to be
00:16:16
considered. There is formatting, You know,
00:16:19
of course, all editors require some minimal form of, of
00:16:25
presentation. And so so it becomes this act of
00:16:31
implicit sharing because you are preparing the work for the
00:16:36
world. OK, So what I chose to bring
00:16:38
today is my collection of salt. I often work mostly with
00:16:43
watercolor and paper and salt, which to me are in line with the
00:16:48
subject I'm exploring. Things I can I can collaborate
00:16:51
with. So a lot of my practice is about
00:16:55
the between guiding the material and surrendering.
00:16:59
So, so salt and water are my favorite because they kind of
00:17:03
finished the job for me and I cannot really control how they
00:17:06
will play with the pigment on the watercolor.
00:17:09
And even sometimes the paper will do its own thing.
00:17:12
And I find that very fascinating.
00:17:14
That's like an extension of what the human does.
00:17:17
And then the rest kind of gets left up to external forces.
00:17:21
And these are why they're my favorite tools because a lot of
00:17:23
my work is looking at these unseen forces that play roles in
00:17:27
our lives. And, and I love the idea of
00:17:31
letting go. So technically salt, like each
00:17:35
salt is its own tool. So for example, like different
00:17:40
sized salts will cause like different effects.
00:17:44
So already the the size and shape of the crystal can create
00:17:49
a different effect on the paper. Then I have differences with
00:17:53
fine salt like for example if I have like a like just your
00:17:58
normal you know table salt will dissolve a lot faster and create
00:18:04
like smaller speckles. But what I really like about the
00:18:07
salt is when it's very chunky and it'll create huge crater
00:18:11
like spidery effects, let's say once it's all dry.
00:18:17
And then also the different salts have different mineral
00:18:20
levels, which I think also effects how it will behave with
00:18:23
the paper. So in a way, if it works by like
00:18:26
taking water from the paper, the faster absorbing ones will have
00:18:31
a different bloom on the paper than the slower absorbing one,
00:18:34
which would look more like textured.
00:18:38
And then there's also different minerals in the salts.
00:18:42
So like I went this summer to Peru with my husband and outside
00:18:47
Cusco, there's a beautiful salt plane called Morass.
00:18:50
And they had so many different salts.
00:18:53
And I ended up buying every single one and testing them on
00:18:56
paper. And I saw that some were very
00:18:58
minimal rich, like the black salts and the pink salts.
00:19:02
And those ones alter the water and how the pigment separates
00:19:05
differently than for example, the table.
00:19:08
So I just showed you. So some can look more cloudy and
00:19:11
more smoky rather than crisp, depending on that pigment,
00:19:16
depending on kind of properties they have like magnesium or
00:19:20
whatever salt has. And they're not always all the
00:19:24
same crystal of sodium chloride. So in a way, different salts are
00:19:29
also different tools. And then there's other factors
00:19:33
like how wet is your paper and what kind of paper and how much
00:19:36
pigment is on the paper. I say to you, salt is a tool,
00:19:39
but actually within that category, there's so many more
00:19:43
subcategories to explore. And that's why I like using the
00:19:49
salt and the water together. It feels alive.
00:19:52
And it's like this whole element of unpredictability that I
00:19:55
really enjoy. So like I can set the conditions
00:19:59
like, but at the end of the day, the salt will finish the work
00:20:04
and the water. So the evaporation or the
00:20:07
gravity or? Whatever's in it or time that I
00:20:11
that I waited before putting it on the paper.
00:20:15
So I like it because it kind of mimics what I'm working on,
00:20:20
which is a lot about natural systems, you could say, like
00:20:25
galaxies and cells and things like that.
00:20:29
Do tools lead to certain rituals and what kind of work conditions
00:20:36
do they create? Are there any moments when you
00:20:40
have to fight your own tools or the conditions that they create
00:20:45
or take on others which are considered obsolete or not as
00:20:50
used as before? I still use Word, not a lot of
00:20:53
people do, but I actually like to be offline when I'm writing.
00:20:59
So I make a choice to turn off the Internet and really just
00:21:03
focus and give myself that time. Or if I'm in a space like an
00:21:07
airplane or a low, you know, bad reception area, it's actually
00:21:11
great. I'm actually thrilled because
00:21:13
it's time to focus on the work. And that's why Microsoft Word
00:21:17
continues to be an interesting tool for me personally because
00:21:23
it allows me for that offline writing.
00:21:27
And you know, I also think that there is a this moment when, for
00:21:33
example, I take certain liberties with grammar and that
00:21:38
moment when you sort of tell the word or you know, the the word
00:21:41
corrector to ignore it is a very empowering moment for me.
00:21:45
I'm like, no, ignore it. I want it this way.
00:21:48
And then that you also have access to tools like a
00:21:51
thesaurus. And that's really great because
00:21:55
you can of course expand your line of inquiry by just looking
00:21:59
at related words, right as as what you can say this this
00:22:02
related family of language and then it opens doorways for you.
00:22:07
And so I think that the the type of word processor that you use
00:22:11
is actually quite intentional. For me, notes on my computer
00:22:15
still are very informal, still are just sort of like 1 liners,
00:22:18
ideas that pop into my mind that sometimes I don't have for
00:22:21
whatever reason, a notebook on me that I just put in on my
00:22:24
notes. Microsoft Word, I know it's the
00:22:27
real deal. And then usually interestingly,
00:22:32
ideas for exhibitions or proposals for projects that are
00:22:34
more creative based, I do work on online Google Docs, you know,
00:22:40
decks because I usually need to share them sooner, quicker, more
00:22:45
agile in a more agile way with curators, gallerists, etcetera.
00:22:51
So a Microsoft Word document still remains quite a private
00:22:55
affair for a long period of time before it becomes publicly
00:23:00
shared. And I perform my work quite
00:23:03
often, and when I give these live readings, people are quite
00:23:07
moved by them. There's a real visceral
00:23:09
reaction. So I wanted to further
00:23:12
incorporate my physical self into my digital works.
00:23:15
And the way I thought to do this was by performing my poems
00:23:20
through movement. I also wanted to lean into the
00:23:23
connection between embodied experience in our attempt to
00:23:26
record it, and also the relationship between spoken
00:23:30
language and body language and movement and physicality.
00:23:34
Of course, as a, you know, Latin America American, I, I have a
00:23:36
lot of movement in my body. When I speak, it's, it feels
00:23:40
like a full form effort to get my meaning across.
00:23:45
And, you know, when my hands are tied literally, it feels like
00:23:49
I'm not as evocative or as expressive as I could be.
00:23:53
And so I really wanted to hammer this idea in by becoming
00:23:59
becoming language through movement.
00:24:01
Mammal. The hunger strategy is not
00:24:07
working. Starving the home as I am
00:24:13
starved. Better to serve it as I am
00:24:19
wrought, bathe it as I am doused, clothe it as I am clung.
00:24:31
To give, yes, to give, to retort as if done.
00:24:44
Oh, something somewhere has ended.
00:24:49
But not here, where my middle spawns a soul.
00:24:57
Watch me sit while my gut constructs bone, hear me speak
00:25:06
while my trunk accretes brain think me filled while my belly
00:25:17
builds tongue. I transform, yes, transform
00:25:29
stupor into skull. This was Mammal 2024 by Anna
00:25:40
Maria Caballero. For Those Who Aren't Watching is
00:25:43
also a performative piece by the artist, choreographed by
00:25:47
herself. Watercolor was the first major
00:25:51
tool that I used for many years. And because I didn't do an
00:25:55
undergrad in art, I don't have technical training on oil
00:25:59
painting, let's say. So I went for the ones that were
00:26:02
easier for me to use without having been taught how to use
00:26:05
them. So that's why I began.
00:26:07
That's how my love affair with watercolor began.
00:26:10
And then I also realized that what I enjoy hugely about
00:26:15
watercolor, what I was doing a lot of work on, on sexuality and
00:26:18
sensuality. And I like that kind of tension
00:26:20
between this being a medium that a lot of older people use or
00:26:24
younger people use for things like landscapes.
00:26:27
And, and then I realized what I also liked is like this endless
00:26:31
flow and how the watercolor decided where my pigment would
00:26:35
end up sitting and drying. And sometimes people were like,
00:26:40
oh, but watercolor is really hard because you can't erase
00:26:42
anything. But the other thing I, I often
00:26:46
do is I work on smaller scales, so it's easier for me to like
00:26:50
just move on and start again. If something doesn't work, I'm,
00:26:52
I won't try and fix it. I'll just learn and move along.
00:26:56
The main reason I like to collaborate with these organic
00:26:59
materials is because I truly believe that there are external
00:27:04
energies or whatever and unseen things that are helping each of
00:27:08
us, that are guiding each of us. So when I go into the studio in
00:27:11
the morning, the first thing I will do is fill up my water pot
00:27:16
and I will talk to the water. I know this sounds insane, but
00:27:19
you know, like I actually will talk to my water and I say thank
00:27:23
you for helping me today. And this is what we're going to
00:27:26
do. And, and then I go and I light a
00:27:28
candle and I'll set the same intention and then I'll go
00:27:31
through my crystals and each one has a different.
00:27:34
So for example, like AI will, I will go fast to my selenite,
00:27:39
which is for cleansing. I will clean the space and then
00:27:41
I'll open my session. This is selenite.
00:27:46
They say that if light was a crystal it would be selenite.
00:27:50
But this has cleansing and healing properties.
00:27:52
And so I open the session and I try and put a bubble of
00:27:56
protection around what's going to happen in the studio today.
00:27:59
And then the most important crystal I have is rose quartz
00:28:03
because this is about self love. So if I want to remove all the
00:28:07
doubts, I believe that if I have a moment with my rose quartz, I
00:28:12
will be able to increase the amount of self love.
00:28:15
And it doesn't matter whether all of this is real or not.
00:28:18
It helps me and my work. So but just to say that that my
00:28:23
my routine when I start is the same as why I use salt and
00:28:26
water. It's all about asking for
00:28:29
guidance and protection and allowing me the privilege of
00:28:33
producing the image I want to produce today.
00:28:35
Support, collaborators, platforms.
00:28:39
The world outside the studio is at times mirrored in the work,
00:28:44
but the work also has influence in the space outside and beyond
00:28:50
its realm. How does it work for Anna Maria
00:28:54
and for Alex? I think the fact that I'm taking
00:28:56
poetry digital is talking about where people are and how people
00:29:02
are reading. I'm not dumbing down my work in
00:29:05
order to bring it to these spaces, but I am speaking the
00:29:09
visual and let's say, format languages of the digital in
00:29:14
order to be in dialogue and in order to share poetry with a
00:29:18
wider audience. I'm a different woman in every
00:29:23
room. In the kitchen, efficient
00:29:27
operative as fork quiet in the bedroom, Tiptoe to avoid
00:29:35
discourse, the weight of telling you everything is fine, nothing
00:29:43
happened in the bathroom, Confessional thoughts bend into
00:29:49
curve, hungry as the dip that concludes my spine.
00:29:56
The volume of forward of woman who stays in the nursery
00:30:05
nostalgic I summoned the past, a love of distant animals, whales
00:30:14
and. I think that poetry has lots to
00:30:18
gain by participating in unexpected spaces, and people
00:30:21
have lots to gain also from encountering poetry in places
00:30:26
where they would have maybe not encountered it before and being
00:30:30
exposed to its sorcery. I, I think that, you know, we
00:30:36
have to reconcile our personal relationships with the screen.
00:30:39
It's all, it's a very personal, one-on-one subjective
00:30:44
reconciliation. There's no one-size-fits-all for
00:30:48
this. And if it's not the right space
00:30:50
or dynamic for someone, then that's something that should be
00:30:53
honored. For me, there is a joy in
00:30:56
sharing my work and in participating in opportunities
00:30:59
that present themselves. Because I'm active in certain
00:31:02
ways on online. I really think I'm very hard to
00:31:07
pin down in the sense that my work can take the form of an
00:31:11
installation, it can take the form of sculpture, it can take
00:31:15
the form of a video work, it can take the form of of a series of
00:31:19
printed materials. And you know, even within the
00:31:24
sculpture, I present books as sculptures.
00:31:26
I work with 3D printing. So there's a quite a range to my
00:31:31
practice and I really like to experiment, to innovate.
00:31:36
I love working with artisans and different types of makers and
00:31:40
I'm very sort of mindful and happy to shout out the people
00:31:47
that I work with. A lot of artists for some reason
00:31:50
either like to sort of puff up their chest because they do it
00:31:53
all, or they like to hide their collaborators.
00:32:00
And for me, it's absolutely wonderful to be able to work
00:32:03
with a master paper maker who's been making paper in Madrid for
00:32:07
40 years and, you know, have a picture with her and share it on
00:32:11
social media and say, this is Nunche who helped me turn my
00:32:15
sheets into paper for a project. Or this is Javier in Bogota who
00:32:21
works wonders with metallic paint, you know, or this is
00:32:25
Louise, the photographer that I like to work with.
00:32:27
Why would I not seek out partners to create works that
00:32:33
are that are wonderful and why would I not elevate the people
00:32:37
with whom I work? So I was always in the workforce
00:32:40
until I was about to give. I mean, I think I was 8 months
00:32:44
pregnant when I stopped working for the first time since I was
00:32:47
16, basically. And so, you know, I gave myself
00:32:51
that moment. Of course, I was very lucky that
00:32:54
I was in a home that could support me not being part of the
00:32:57
workforce for a period of time. And so it was, it was the moment
00:33:04
when I sat and gathered all my poems into a manuscript and
00:33:07
started sending it out. Of course, I, you know, you're
00:33:10
really busy with a child, but after there's a routine that
00:33:12
sort of comes into place. I, I had mental time.
00:33:16
There's a lot of empty waiting around when you're with an
00:33:22
infant, you're waiting for the baby to finish eating.
00:33:26
You're waiting for the baby to wake up.
00:33:28
So there's this also solitude that allows for the mind to
00:33:34
roam. And I think that's really when I
00:33:36
was when I just kept coming back to my writing, kept writing so
00:33:40
much. I wrote so, so, so much, at
00:33:41
least in a journal. And then I also started saying,
00:33:45
OK, I'm going to start organizing this work.
00:33:46
This work needs to be packaged and sent out into the world.
00:33:52
And of course the word processor comes in and printers come in,
00:33:56
right and organizing a manuscript in a way that makes
00:33:59
sense to a reader and a table of contents.
00:34:04
The practicality of publishing a book which which requires
00:34:09
certain tools as well that are important.
00:34:11
I do think that the act of making it's, it's very important
00:34:16
for people's inner or for my inner, for my healing is, is
00:34:21
very important to put me in that state of flow where I can
00:34:23
reconnect to the, the rest of the cycle.
00:34:28
Like you say, like the, the dreams, the state you're in
00:34:31
right when you wake up or right when you fall asleep.
00:34:34
If you go back in, If I go back into that state of flow, then I
00:34:37
can, I feel like it's more in the same.
00:34:41
It's aligned. It's all aligned whether I'm
00:34:43
awake or asleep. But I have to get out of my
00:34:46
head, I have to get out of my ego.
00:34:49
I have to not read the news. I have to be alone.
00:34:52
I have to look in. I have to be very, very present
00:34:56
to listen to my inner world. It's very hard to put myself in
00:34:59
any sort of box. But there's always some sort of
00:35:02
anatomical hint or suggestion in my work, but there's not
00:35:06
necessarily a human. It could just be like a hint or
00:35:10
a suggestion at some sort of entity.
00:35:13
More explicitly. What I'm doing is trying to draw
00:35:18
a spirit, I guess in a way. Sometimes I'm trying to Draw
00:35:21
Something more suggestive, and sometimes I do actually put
00:35:25
humans in this. I mean, would you say the
00:35:27
painting behind me is figurative?
00:35:28
This is a group of guys and ancestors, let's say, watching
00:35:32
over. Yeah.
00:35:34
It's like a spirit team. This painting specifically, I
00:35:38
made that during a very difficult time for me a few
00:35:40
years ago. So I personally felt like my
00:35:44
team had grown like my support system, my ancestors, like more
00:35:49
people, not people, more entities, more soul were there
00:35:53
to support me during a difficult, difficult time.
00:35:56
That's why I did this one, which is a lot more of them than
00:35:59
usual. But it's it's interesting
00:36:02
because yeah, I don't know what they look like.
00:36:07
I just, I don't know if they have heads.
00:36:10
I often hear voices, but I don't ever see them.
00:36:13
So they're probably not figure all at all.
00:36:17
And finally, what perspectives did their practice lift for
00:36:22
them? My experimentation with AI is
00:36:26
rooted in text to image generative AI.
00:36:30
The AI there where you put language and turn the language
00:36:32
into images. I don't write with AI.
00:36:36
I write myself pen and paper. You know, I've been publishing
00:36:41
all my work in that manner and will continue to do so.
00:36:44
I am very interested, Joanna, in the ways that we're using
00:36:50
language in the era of generative AI, because I think
00:36:54
it represents an evolution to language.
00:36:57
I think there's an evolution to the way we're using punctuation,
00:37:00
an evolution to the ways that we are using semantics and sentence
00:37:05
structure. And that's what I'm looking at
00:37:07
as a writer and artist, this evolution in our use of literacy
00:37:13
and what it means to turn language into something literal
00:37:19
via the image. When you actually can input a
00:37:22
text and turn it into a fixed image.
00:37:26
With generative AI, there's an interesting translation
00:37:29
happening that I think merits a closer look.
00:37:33
Language has been a text to image generator for centuries
00:37:37
within our minds. We've been generating images
00:37:40
from language, you know, since we learned how to speak and tell
00:37:43
stories. But now we can create fixed
00:37:46
images that really place our personal relationships with text
00:37:51
versus image front and centre. So they invite a closer look on
00:37:56
a very, very, very clear stage where there's a text.
00:38:02
And here's the image that AI has generated.
00:38:04
How does it make you feel to see them together?
00:38:07
Is the image anchoring, limiting?
00:38:10
Is the text perhaps more of an open door?
00:38:13
And does this disrupt in some ways our notions of language as
00:38:17
a sign system vis A vis visual representation?
00:38:21
That's what I think is interesting.
00:38:23
I have a series called Being Borges that works with the work
00:38:26
of Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian writer, where I'm
00:38:29
using AI to translate the text that he wrote in Spanish with a
00:38:33
woman called Margarita Guerrero, a translation by Norman Thomas T
00:38:38
Giovanni, and then original poetry that I write based on the
00:38:42
source text in Spanish. And I'm using AI to translate
00:38:47
the Spanish prose, English prose, and English poetry,
00:38:52
seeing how these differences in interpretation reveal certain
00:38:58
aspects about translation itself and the and the impossibility
00:39:02
really implicit in in translation.
00:39:06
Who knows what's going on? Absolutely no one can tell you
00:39:09
they know the entire truth, not even a quantum physicist.
00:39:12
But what I'm trying, what makes the most sense to me is that
00:39:16
these visitations or messages or dreams may just be my
00:39:22
consciousness existing on several levels.
00:39:25
Does everyone have voices? Do is it just intuition?
00:39:29
Is it your gut? Is it just my gut talking to me?
00:39:32
I, I had no idea. But I definitely feel sometimes
00:39:37
a little bit like a puppet on a string.
00:39:39
So the more I work on surrendering, the easier the
00:39:43
emotions get. But emotions are absolutely
00:39:46
fascinating. Like it's if you can start to
00:39:48
observe them and you know it will pass, does make things a
00:39:52
lot easier. Exhibition Nesters is an
00:39:54
independent podcast created and hosted by me, Joanna Pierre
00:39:58
Nevers. I like your your artist tools
00:40:01
things because it's like what is working for you that helps you
00:40:04
keep up that dedication and that helps you.
00:40:07
You know, get into the studio and make what you want to make.
00:40:09
You're a wonderful interviewer, Joanne.
00:40:12
I really loved each question and the thought that went into this.
00:40:15
I really appreciate that effort, the behind the scenes effort.
00:40:18
So thank you so much for the invitation and for being so
00:40:21
thoughtful about it. This was such a wonderful
00:40:30
experience speaking to two very, very different artists.
00:40:35
You have such an amazing capacity of articulating the
00:40:41
most material and technical aspects of the work to the most
00:40:45
spiritual, societal, and cultural and linguistic aspects
00:40:52
of it. If you enjoy the episode, you
00:40:54
can dig further into these topics by going on Sub Stack and
00:40:59
subscribing to Art Think Asaurus.
00:41:03
If you want to explore my whole page or to Exhibitionist as
00:41:07
files, you can Google it or you can go on Sub Stack and look for
00:41:11
it. Or very simply, you can go to
00:41:14
the show's notes and you have a link straight to the page.
00:41:18
I hate newsletters. I don't like writing them and I
00:41:23
don't like getting them, even though they're very practical.
00:41:26
So each time an episode is released, you get an essay, you
00:41:31
get a short ensemble of articles, references and
00:41:36
biographies of the two people interviewed or any guest that
00:41:40
you will have in the episode. So it is worth digging into it
00:41:45
because we're all both actors and spectators of art and life.