Tell us about yourself and your work.
Hi! My name is Christina Barrera, I’m twenty three years old, I’m
from South Florida and I live and work in Baltimore, Maryland. I earned
my BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art where I majored in
Interdisciplinary Fine Arts and minored in Art History. My work deals
with, examines, and visualizes the idea of a universal consciousness or
energy that connects all beings and entities in the universe, and the
idea that everything is essentially made up of the same “stuff” weaving
in and out of and melding into one another. I like to make spaces that
sometimes have figures or surrogates for figures that dissolve into or
are interrupted by the spaces that they are integrally a part of. We
are discrete objects, alienated by our solid form and yet fluid bodies
constantly in a state of flux, giving and receiving information in the
form of energy. The work seeks to dissolve the boundaries that we
perceive between ourselves and our universe and literally interconnect
energy, environment, figures and all things; giving the work a sense of
existing in a timeless space and communicating that within the reality
of the created space all things are the same in their material and
immaterial existences despite our seeming separateness. My work
incorporates painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, sculpture,
photography and textile, among other things.
What got you started? What keeps you in?
My mother is an elementary school art teacher so I was always
encouraged to make art work, but predictably enough having an art
teacher as a mother made me reject art making for a while when I was
young. I had a lot of dream careers before I considered being an artist,
one of those for a long time in primary school was to be a lawyer
because I was good at arguing and I enjoyed winning those arguments,
which should tell you something (probably terrible) about me in the
third grade! Then I attended The Middle School of the Arts in West Palm
Beach, Florida and I consciously chose to become an artist in the eighth
grade almost certainly because of the emphasis that was placed on the
importance of art-making, exploration, and experimentation there. I also
attended the Alexander W. Dreyfoos jr. High School of the Arts* (always
a mouthful!) and the environment there is both very rigorous and very
diverse and open in regards to making work, so it just cemented my
practice as a part of my life that wove everything else together. That
level of making and consideration made me view my practice as a way for
me to create a space and a system that allowed me to think or work
through instead of simply do things, and that ultimately is what I think
made me an artist and is how and why I stay in it.
What/who inspires you? In what way?
There are a trillion things maybe. Tons of things that don’t directly
correlate to my practice inspire me, like anime, bike riding, all sorts
of television, fashion, textiles, cooking, the internet, music,
stickers that I can never figure out where to put, museum education
practice, outer space, painting my nails, zines, Harry Potter, theory
and ideology surrounding museums, institutions, and monuments, I mean,
I’m just pulling stuff from everywhere and nowhere and I could go on for
a long time and come up with a really stupid list!
The list of things that I can directly pinpoint as influential to me in
the realm of my current practice is actually quite short, I think. Just
to get some obvious pre-requisites out of the way, I’m obviously
influenced and inspired by my past professors and mentors, my very
talented friends (links at the bottom!), the vast image bank that is art
history, any contemporary work that I experience first hand, and really
all the images that I see everyday, meaning I owe a lot of my
influencing images and probably a lot of my image bank to the internet.
As far as imagery is concerned I can’t really say what is really
going to influence me in the studio versus simply catch my eye. I can
say that there are certainly recurring images, for example the lush
tropical plant life that I know from my Florida home, since the recent
death of my first cat she has cropped up in a lot of my images, I seem
to be drawn to images of fire, night imagery, and probably a lot of
other things I’m forgetting right now. My imagery used to be heavily
influenced by magical realism and the kind of atmosphere and vivid
off-kilter imagery in magical realist Hispanic literature. I’ve read a
lot of Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and although they don’t
fit into the magical realist movement, I’ve read a lot of Federico
Garcia Lorca and Jorge Luis Borjes. This influence has waned over the
past few years but I feel that I owe a lot to their literary imagery.
Conceptually I’m incredibly influenced by Joseph Campbell (and
therefore by Carl Jung, although I’ve never read any of his work) and by
the ideologies of the collective consciousness (collective
unconscious) and simultaneous time/time lines that surround many
meditative practices. This idea is in turn very present (in a number of
different iterations) in quantum physics, and of particular interest to
me at the moment, multiverse theory. I try to get into the more complex
science but it sometimes just complicates my understanding of the base
concepts. My favorites at the moment are Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan.
I’ve watched a lot of Cosmos, and I’ve just started reading A Brief History of Time after getting through The Grand Design, I also think about The Field by Lynne McTaggart, Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman, and Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino a lot in the studio. When I do listen to music in the studio it’s likely to be William Basinki’s Disintegration Loops,
or recently something like Bob Dylan or the Tallest Man on Earth, but
WNYC’s Radio Lab is what’s usually playing in my studio (oh! and
TEDtalks!). The amount of visual artists that I look at and are inspired
by is endless and I couldn’t begin to formulate a comprehensive list
here.
What is art for you? Examples of "real art"?
I think that art is mostly just things labeled “art”. I’m absolutely
okay with this and have no qualms with what is or isn’t called art,
however it essentially means that the label of art lies in the intention
to make art. I do think that this means that something has do be done
to make art. By this definition an untouched thing you found on the
street and left there isn’t art, but a thing you found on the street and
picked up and did something with (even if then you left it in the
street again) can be if you intend it to be. This goes both ways, in
that a functional but beautifully decorated object that is not
considered art in its indigenous culture shouldn’t be considered art in
our culture either, but rather and artifact with respect to their
labeling of their own creations. That really gets me hot and bothered
sometimes. Ultimately I think that art is whatever the maker wants it to
be, and different kinds and levels of art have different venues and
purposes which is why people mistakenly take them to be different, when
they’re not. They’re all art.
“real art”? “real art” is art that exists in some plane of reality? things that are real are real, right?
The most powerful/your favourite medium: picture, words, sounds? Anything else?
Let me start by saying that I don’t think that any medium can be
inherently more powerful than any other medium. One piece of art work
can be more subjectively powerful than another, and that may be due in
part to the medium and how appropriate it is to the work or how well
it’s handled but it wont be solely because of the medium.
My favorite mediums, if we’re talking materials, are charcoal and
pastel, photocopies, paper (cut and woven), photography, etching, and
oils probably, at least these are my most commonly used. I’m recently
getting really into porcelain molding, flip books, and getting back into
sculpture but I haven’t acted on any of this very much yet, I’m a slow
mover sometimes. I’m starting to think about gifs in a way I’ve never
thought of them as well, let’s say I’m considering them. In the past
I’ve been drawn to textiles, hand sewing, transparencies, light boxes,
and sometimes hand built ceramics.
As for the second part of the question, I use text on the rare occasion
but I’m almost strictly and proudly an image maker, whether it be in
two or three dimensions.
Plans for future (of your work)?
For the immediate future, in the studio I’m planning on getting into
porcelain molds and getting back into sculpture, I have two on-going
collaborative projects going with my studio mate Ricardo Contreras, one
of which we’re getting ready to get into in earnest, and I’m starting a
new body of large works that I’m really excited about (you can check my
website and tumblr for updates through-out the summer!) I’m also working
on a curatorial proposal and I’ll be putting out a zine and related
submission-based blog called Letters to Ghosts later this summer.
I just de-installed two shows, and am opening another group show in a
week but after that I’ll be working on more calls for entry, and
residency applications for next year. I really want to go to this year
long residency just outside of Paris!
My longer term goals include grad school within two or three years,
hopefully in New York but not necessarily, and eventually teaching on
the university level along side my studio practice. I could definitely
work in the gallery or museum circuit somewhere in between! I’ve worked
in a couple museums and I like how museums can impact a community if
they’re run the right way and have an invigorated staff and fresh
approach to education programs.
Anything you'd like to add? Maybe a song, a picture, hello to friends and family?
Thanks for the interview and the opportunity to talk about my work!
you can find me elsewhere on the internet:
prints of my work are for sale on artflakes.com
and here are some excellent peers that I’m inspired by:
I just want to shout out to magnet programs here; Both my former middle
and high school are public magnet arts programs, and they are
absolutely amazing. To everyone who says that magnet programs create
elitist privileged students or are a brain drain on the schools in the
area, I say this: the United States public school system is there
supposedly to provide quality elite education to all its citizens which
means that high caliber programs in the arts, academics, and vocational
schools are something to strive for rather than reject. It is impossible
to claim that other schools do not do well because there is a better
program in the area, the state of those other schools rests in the hands
of government funding for good teachers, and since teachers are paid in
unicorn tears and fairy wishes, very few highly educated top tier
students decide to specialize in education or become teachers meaning
that the system is only working for some students and not others. This
is not the fault of the program that is working, those programs are
progressive, innovative and invigorated so they attract progressive,
innovative, and invigorated teachers.
These schools are the reason I am where I am. They are the reason I
had the courage and the tools to pursue my work, they are the reason I
went to a private art university for free, and they are responsible for
shaping and honing hundreds if not thousands of amazingly talented
individuals who are more well rounded and have a fuller sense of
themselves and their abilities thanks to their arts education. There are
many programs like this around the country, although not enough, and
they are under constant attack and threat of being shut down when they
should be emulated.
all images Christina Barrera, all rights reserved 2012
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