{"id":234944,"date":"2021-02-20T09:22:51","date_gmt":"2021-02-20T14:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=234944"},"modified":"2021-02-20T09:24:07","modified_gmt":"2021-02-20T14:24:07","slug":"aimee-joaristi-i-am-my-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/culture\/visual-arts\/aimee-joaristi-i-am-my-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Aim\u00e9e Joaristi: \u201cI am my work\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first time I heard of <\/span>Aim\u00e9e Joaristi<\/span><\/a>\u2019s work was through photographer Ernesto Granado, who had documented Joaristi\u2019s passage through the 13th Havana Biennial. My colleague, a man of the world, was, however, a bit dislocated with the almost clandestine intervention of the artist in the city. According to what he told me, \u201chairy triangles,\u201d which represent female pubes, had been \u201cinstalled\u201d in different columns of the Cuban capital, within easy reach of the curious, who could take them home without knowing what it was about. Through the piece, the artist transgressed, and the passers-by felt that they were also transgressing by taking something that they had not acquired in a lawful way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aim\u00e9e had been invited to the Biennial with the installation <\/span>Enrollate conmigo<\/span><\/i>, for the curatorial space \u201cDetr\u00e1s del Muro.\u201d The piece consisted of five rolls of canvas 1.5 meters wide and between 20 and 15 meters long, which slid down the fa\u00e7ade of a building facing the sea, on the Havana seaside walk. Part of the work was the performance of the opening day of the Biennial, when the artist cut segments from the scroll entitled \u201cLa ofrenda\u201d (acrylic inlaid with plastic roses) to give them to the public.<\/span><\/p>\n

Manifiesto P\u00fab(l)ico (MP)<\/span><\/i> (Pub(l)ic Manifesto) was a kind of unauthorized bonus track of Aimee\u2019s participation in this event, one of the most important of the visual arts on a continental scale, which is held, sometimes with irregular periodicity, in Havana, which is also the artist\u2019s city of birth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since that participation in the Biennial, I have searched for information about Aim\u00e9e, and I learned that she graduated from Interior Architecture in Madrid, and did a second career at the prestigious Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City.<\/span><\/p>\n

I also learned that she, so far, has made nine personal exhibitions, among which it is worth noting <\/span>Tres Cruces<\/span><\/i>, Museo C.A.V, La Neomudejar, Madrid, Spain, 2018; <\/span>XMetro<\/span><\/i>, White Concepts Gallery, Berlin, Germany, 2017; <\/span>Escindida<\/span><\/i>, Galer\u00eda Gorr\u00eda, Havana, Cuba, 2017, and <\/span>Silencios y gritos<\/span><\/i>, Klaus Steinmetz Contemporary, San Jos\u00e9, Costa Rica, 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2020 Aim\u00e9e <\/span>won<\/span><\/a> the Artist of the Future Award, granted by the U.S. <\/span>Contemporary Art Curator Magazine<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

I recently had a talk with the artist in which we talked about her art and the place Cuba has in her creation. Here it goes.<\/span><\/p>\n

What place does Cuba occupy in the construction of your identity, which has been forged in different cities of the world?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Cuba occupies a rather incorporeal place in my imagination, with imperceptible physical connotations, since I left the country in 1959, when I was only two and a half years old, and did not return until 1999, when I consciously set foot on the island\u2019s soil. And I felt what it represented<\/span><\/p>\n

The first impression I had of the city of Havana was to find myself in a Seville located in the tropics. With this sudden conception, I tried to bring together my two existential worlds: Spain, where I was raised, and Cuba, where I was born.<\/span><\/p>\n

As is logical, in my mental construction there are very different fetishes that denote Cubanness: the <\/span>congr\u00ed<\/span><\/i>, the black beans, Miramar, Lucum\u00ed, pork, the Castro surname….<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Bast\u00f3n
Bast\u00f3n Yoruba (2020). Ceramics. Museum of Arts and Sciences.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Havana is for me a small Spain. In it my present and past life converge. I come, on my father\u2019s side, from a family of Basque migrants. My grandfather, upon settling in Cuba, founded a steel structures company with limited resources that became important over time. My mother descends from a wealthy sugar industry Cuban family. The cultural contrasts that occurred in my life have enriched my way of facing everyday life, that is why the fables of princes and beggars always exist in my mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

How did the transition from architect to artist operate in you?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Art has been the lung of my existence. It\u2019s why I breathe and function. I cannot separate it from my life, nor can I accurately deduce where the limits of each practice or condition begin and end.<\/span><\/p>\n

I studied interior architecture by default in Spain. The specialty was easy for me, and since I also liked to have fun, I didn\u2019t have to be locked up for hours studying. My time in New York was a carefree time of fun and study. There I also enrolled in advertising design courses, another manifestation that came naturally to me, and did not hinder too much my desire to live intensely. From New York I went to live in Milan. In that city I worked in the world of ready-to-wear fashion and developed as an interior designer; this motivated me, a few years later, to open my own architecture and interior design studio in Costa Rica.<\/span><\/p>\n

My dilettante life came to an end when I found success in that profession. For many years I felt that I was getting paid to have fun producing high-end projects. But when the world economic crisis of 2008 arrived, that existential feeling of wanting to start again gained strength; I decided to take a sharp turn of the wheel and dedicate myself almost entirely to art.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reviewing the resume that I was able to access, I see that your work is made up of series. Is this a conscious act based on the very genesis or do you accumulate works that you later discover are articulated in a common discourse?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

My creative production methodology is born of instinct and is nourished by it. Unconsciously I work in series; and not for a preconceived reason, but because they are all daughters of the same momentary feeling, which does not end with a single work or with a group of them. Obviously, there are bridges between one series and the next. I am referring to works that are on the way, that dialogue with the past and the future; that on their own transit reveal some supposed dissociation or loss of belonging, but that then time takes care of relocating.<\/span><\/p>\n

Describe the journey from idea to work.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Many times the work is born before the idea, and it takes me a few days to realize that a project has been born. My ideas are clarified in the early morning hours, they take shape, to then be able to materialize them. As I work on the surface and always attested by basic instincts, there is a common thread that becomes much more obvious in the final reading of the spectator, or when later I distance myself and broaden the analytical perspective of my work.<\/span><\/p>\n

I work for continuous and intense periods, until I reach physical exhaustion. That is why I practice yoga and meditation, as well as other sports disciplines that keep my body strong and agile. This training is also necessary to be able to create large-format works, a dimensional aspect that I am passionate about to the absurd.<\/span><\/p>\n

I imagine a future time in which, sitting calmly and almost tied up, I dedicate myself to creating a miniscule work until I disappear….<\/span><\/p>\n

You are a very powerful installation artist. Also your \u201ceasel works\u201d denote an intuitive, gestural, carefree expressiveness that somewhat contradicts your training as an architect, based on the assumption that architecture requires, above all, functionality and rationality. Do you feel that contradiction?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

The type of pictorial work that I develop goes from floor to wall at a meteoric speed. I never know where to start: painting on a bench or running around looking for the canvas. Normally the same work passes both through the floor and through the wall, and from the wall to the floor; sometimes I even leave it out in the open for a while so that its process can continue without my intervention.<\/span><\/p>\n