Juanele Interviews Argentine Artist Fabiana Barreda

JUANELE INTERVIEWS FABIANA BARREDASEPTEMBER 20, 2010BARREDA’S HOMEBUENOS AIRES

dream of a little house that my parents had in a country club.

FB: More like a little house?

GS: Yes, more like a little house, with a very nice swimming pool.

FB: So, there was water. About the garden, what memories do you have?

GS: On one side of the garden there were five big, nice trees, far away. There were flowers around them. And on the other side was the swimming pool. A lot of sunlight. And somewhere, also a bad dog that came from the neighbours’ house (laughs).

FB: Lots of trees, according to what you say.

In general, I am moved by the Home, the idea of memory as something that constructs you. That the (idea of) house is that house. In general, then the pieces start to grow and they start to constitute themselves here and here and then they arrive in the heart. So what I do on your hand, that already has a specific drawing, is to construct on top of that drawing. This house rep-resents, for me, the state you are in. A kiss.

GS: Thanks.

F.B. In general, my work has to do with this small territory: that you donate these memories to me and then I inspire myself and I start to draw and and it relates a lot to childhood. I think one of the pieces, for me, consists in linking this feeling of child-hood with the feelings of the heart. That’s the magic of art, isn’t it? And, at the same time, I feel I have all this universe that gets

Gabriela Schevach: What is beauty?

Fabiana Barreda: For me, beauty is like a spiritual diamond that incarnates in the body. Yes, it has all those dimensions (laughs). Short, but with high expectations.

GS: And when you say spiritual?

FB: What am I referring to? Well, I feel that now, at the halfway point of my life, that... In general, I work with sensations, with the skin, with the body of the other, with the other’s sensibility, who, in general, gives me his or her body, space, love. And they are emotions that become tangible thanks to the incarnation of the body. It’s like, in general, photography creates the aura for me, the incarnated aura. It’s as if matter that became, I don’t know, as if something magical happens. It’s like when we talk of falling in love. The energy is for me eternal. It exists eternal-ly and it incarnates in different states, in different times. And as you feel that you’ve come across a person for ten seconds twenty years ago and you encounter him or her again and it’s the same. You throw an arrow into infinity and it’s going to fall in the exact place because that energy has to be with that en-ergy. It’s mystical-magical, isn’t it? And with people it’s also like that. Fortunately, all the people in my universe are very dear friends who help me with pictures.

So, would you allow me to take your hand? The hand, I’ve had the opportunity of learning, connects with the heart. So, I have a work called Architecture of Desire. I’m going to ask you, how was your little house when you were little?

GS: I used to live in a flat, a nice, rationalist flat, but I always

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PROYECTO HABITAT, ARQUITECTURA DEL VACÍO

constructed. That’s where my work called “Mi hogar son las líneas de mi mano" (My home are the lines of my hand) comes from. Because the little house, when you grab it, has the exact measures of that map. So, what I attempt to do there, it’s like a territory where you connect desire with the body. And de-sires are always something universal and private at the same time, aren’t they? It’s like you say, I’ve got my Bauhaus home, but I want my house with a garden and I understand you be-cause some times some intellectual appears in the family, and values are intellectual and very modernist, but then affections are related to something blander than a purist or rationalist thesis allows. In my case, I have made (models of) houses of the history of architecture, but they are also family homes, as the house of the bridge, as the Ville Savoy. Anyway, they are always houses with garden or streams.

GS: They are always houses with a strong idea of construc-tion...

FB: Yes. There, as I say, Saturn beside the Moon. That also relieves me because, on the one hand, there is illusion, that’s this, that it has light. I did this piece when I had Vladimir, my son. I’ve been invited to Malba niños (Malba Kids), so then I did a series that were more like toys, fluorescent. My first houses were transparent. When it’s transparent, it’s like a floating de-sire, still like the material of clouds. So I think I like this sensa-tion of a house of light, as a material implated in the reality that refracts it. So, then I develop another line about, well, it’s possible to build it. If it’s not there, it’s built. If it falls, it goes. This piece, that I love very much, I can give it to a friend who has just separated, who feels that his or her home is the body, when you feel there’s no other territory in the universe except

your own body, your own borders. And I can also give it to those who are expecting a baby and are building a house for someone to arrive in the world. So, what I like most is that it’s a piece to give as a present. Because that’s another big topic. It’s called Multiple. I found the possibility to say that construction is also related to power, let’s say, to surface to life, when life is full of fluctuating emotions all the time. And it also opposes a sensa-tion, as I say, a more psychoanalytic sensation, where you are, of course, a victim of destiny, but you can build this destiny too. It is a little bit like that, isn’t it?

And after this series, I pass to one that’s more related to these, that returns to drawing. This is the Buda Girl and all this series is linked to the constellations. It has to do with the possibil-ity of, first, to do a drawing of light. I return to transparence. Transparence is for me fascinating because it’s what you’ve said about beauty. After many years, I’m studying astrology on my own. So, I have Venus in Virgo. And Venus is very idealistic, as Neptune is, and is also very pure, as the virgin. He’s like a Middle Ages’ knight.

I’m now studying fencing and archery. And, in this context, what I start doing is to draw on the other’s body those chakras and the drawing of the chakras is like mapping. So, transparence is for me that immaterial space that becomes material thanks to light. And, in fact, it’s carved with a laser, which is also a light. It’s like Star Wars. The way you are making the work, the pro-cess, is for me important because it’s a drawing made with light that refracts light, but, in turn, it’s transparent, which is mate-rial under that transparence.

And that’s the Eco Girl, and they are also friends. She’s Leticia

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PROYECTO HABITAT, MÓDULO HOGAR

Mazur, she’s Andrea Servera. I made her like a fairy and I made her with the size, that I like very much, of Tinkerbell, I like the hologram of Princess Leia from Star Wars. It’s like a mixture of something very very old such as fairies and something very fu-turistic. But futuristic from the ‘70s, the ‘80s, it’s not futuristic... I like science fiction from the ‘40s like Forbidden Planet or the ‘70s because it’s more idealistic. Even Blade Runner is idealistic. My generation is from the ‘80s and I’m a bit interested in that.

GS: So transparence allows you to link architecture, which origi-nates as the subject’s idea and desire, but at the same time, it allows you to connect the subject as integrated in that land-scape.

FB: Yes. For me, the two big questions are the body and space. The space, that’s why I call it “Arquitectura Emocional" (Emo-tional Architecture), not the space as pure matter, but as re-lated to the emotions and the body. That’s why I believe that in this work, what we’ve talked about beauty as the spiritual incarnation, has to do with that idealization, that cosmic ar-chitecture, the map that connects us, the house. I’ve made the Buda Girl and the Buda Boy. And here, this is green, because it has nature. Another topic I work with is growing in nature, women who have flowers, life that returns.

In these objects, I feel I’ve been constructing a super idealized space. The other object, that also keeps me company, has to do with me, are these catanas, it look like... I’m picking up my Scor-pio in the 12th House. But here is something interesting, metal. It’s another material. It’s a material linked to the root chakra. Metal also reflects. I’ve got a series of ideas of carving poetry on these blades. There is something also immaterial about blades.

It’s like the body in another dimension. What also interests me about this is the soul of the warrior. The last series, entitled Satori, is related to Japan, it has to do with these pieces that I did at the beginning, do you see? You see like these pieces of mine are like the crown of thorns, the red. While this is a cos-mic eroticism and super sensitive. I believe in the sensitivity of metal, the iron, in fencing they are called “iron." Or the arrows, that are made of wood, they connect to the incarnation of the earth. I’ve started archery. In archery you throw into the sky like Sagittarius. And fencing is down to Earth and with another, with someone else’s pressure.

GS: To cut the skin..

FB: Yes, it’s more physical. Because, otherwise I tend to em-phasize dematerialization. So, I say, well, let’s go down, down, down to Earth and I come back. It’s probably related: my Moon is in Aries. I was never able to meditate calmly in one place, stay still. I feel that through these practices, that are, for me, like the spiritual warrior, I feel the body comes back, but also the wish to construct ideals.

And then it has a dark side, which I also find nice. I say: we all have a dark side, very intense, very strong, very dense and that, the good thing about art is the integration of that dark side as force. It happens in Star Wars, it happens in all the films I like (laughs). And besides, another thing that you learn with time is how the ethical relates to morality. You don’t know what the good gesture is. Goodness doesn’t exist in itself, but the ges-ture, the construction of the event, the heroic act or the gener-ous or the act of love. And human passions go through me. So I believe that when you start to, even like Caravaggio, say, when

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ARQUITECTURA ECOLOGICACASA ROSADA - CARICIA - AMOR

you see Caravaggio, when you see artists I like very much, that are linked to this extreme, I think art allows you, together with other practices like martial or spiritual arts (or whatever), to in-tegrate this drive, so that it doesn’t go against yourself, that it doesn’t become self-destructive or destructive towards others. But it’s with the other and in a situation that’s got an aestheti-cally fighting spirit and an erotic dimension and there’s also something about danger and that sensation that attracts me.

GS: As a way of control too?

FB: Well, possibly. It’s probable, as I have Scorpio in the 12th House.I did a seminar, well, I was experiencing a serious love crisis and I said to myself I was broken, my heart was torn. So then I started archery. Then I’ve began fencing and my archery in-structor took me to a seminar about knives, I remember. And the same teacher would tell you that you could cut yourself here and there, he was also an acupuncture master. And acu-puncture originates in the marks left by the warrirors’ arrows. So, as in homeopathy, cures can come from poison, as pharma-cology, whatever cures can come from the injury itself. This du-ality is what I find interesting. So, if I’d be only in this dimension, I’d be one Fabiana, but, what I’m doing consists in integrating that dimension with this dimension. And afterward, I did a whip seminar. Do you recall the typical woman with the whip, the Catwoman? Those archetypes, as (Carl) Jung would say, also have to do with how it is, what I’m working on, which material, which alchemy I’m constructing.

GS: But, on the other side, in your video, for instance, a transfor-mation is visible, a very gradual...?

FB: Harmonic.

GS: I think the transformation is always present. It’s related to what you say.

FB: Yes, the possibility of transmuting. I’ve studied Psychology as a first career concern. And psyche is also nice because of the mythology of the nymph Psyche, who falls in love with Eros. Psyche means soul. And I think the advantage of being an artist is how to find a channel of self-knowledge to transmute things, maybe very deep injuries and very good gifts. Because, some-times, you are afraid of doing really good, of being successful. And it’s very funny, isn’t it? Because it’s hard to take charge of the force and the dark side, both things are hard. Knowing that you can do a solo exhibition and that everything is fine is also scary. And you are sometimes also scared about taking things to the worst possible position. So I think art is a medium for transmutation. It’s just not an aim in itself, but it also al-lows you to access your own being in a different way — with other practices under manifest, material conditions that also resound in culture, in society, in other people. That energy re-turns, transmuted, and it gives you more force.

GS: And it’s then that you also need to find a formal way of in-carnating it.

FB: Yes, that’s fascinating. That’s the good thing about art. I like philosophy too. I have a background in theoretical abstract knowledge. Or music, but music incarnates too. So, for me the difference between the force of philosopy, that’s wonderful or, for me, art, is that we (the artists) work with ours senses. They are sensations, physical experiences. That’s why it’s the body.

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One of the strongest subjects for me is the body, it’s to touch, to draw, that you hold the little house. You access my work under a physical experience. And physical experiences are ir-reversible. That’s the great thing, they stay like engraving on your body, you don’t forget them. And, as I say, all subjects are forever radically modified. That’s the good thing.

Juanele Interview by Gabriela SchevachPhotographs © Fabiana BarredaDesign by Rick Powell

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