Category: Interviews

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Studio Visit: Tonietta Walters

I Alone

XhyraGraf

latex embedded with steel shavings
plaster tiles
XhyraGraf - "in her Second Life studio"
sand on studio floor

Studio Visit: Tonietta Walters

by Onajide Shabaka

Like many artists, Tonietta Walters struggles with her practice. She is challenged by her practice. And, she is enveloped by her practice in ways that many of us can relate to. It grabs her, shakes her around, asks her tough questions that she cannot always answer. This is the place where we find ourselves, about to enter her studio, the threshold of a place that is uncomfortable but, it’s where she creates and brings into being including, all the things we have just tried to explain.

Miamiartexchange.com: We exhibited your work on Miamiartexchange.com Gallery back in January, 2004 and there is still a similarity in the work we see in your studio today. What attracts you to this material and what is it? How do you work with it?

Tonietta Walters: The material is latex but I also use fiberglass resin. I use it because of its texture and its tactile qualities. I started using these as an undergrad because I like the way it takes on the memory of a surface or form. I like the natural color of latex when it dries. I like the way it allows me to work through my art making process. I’m very much a process oriented person and find I work best if I am in a process heavy, creative mode.

A few years ago I painted on latex that was stretched on a frame like a regular painting but, for the most part, I prefer to use it more organically or freely and have used it in sculptural forms. The one thing about latex is that it degrades over time just as memory does. An example of this deterioration can be found in the two flat pieces I have with steel shavings embedded into them.. One of them  is deteriorating faster than the other. (image above)

M: Those two types of works, the latex stretched on the frame and the flat pieces with steel shavings, are very different. The ones that are stretched tell the regular viewer this is a finished, completed work. It’s final. Yet it’s not when thinking about how the material is going to change rapidly over time. The flat pieces are much more conceptual and one would have the expectation that there is some fluidity in them, especially when you’re so heavily invested in process. It seems that you have something to work through there however, I know a major part of the concern is the audience, your audience as you’ve found them. You used the word “honesty” in talking about your relationship with your audience and maybe there is a something disingenuous in your approach.

T: There’s also in the work the concept of a “framing” or memory capture of the more visceral aspects of experience: some of the pieces have that and some don’t. If I had my choice, I’d do installations. I did an installation at the Broward Main Library, 6th Floor gallery, that included paintings, sculptures surrounded by sand and the tiles you see here, made from plaster onto which I inscribed the various languages, cuneiform, greek, binary code, etc, I will reuse the tiles in other installation work. I’m currently working on a similar installation with sand (see image above) and although I have some initial ideas about what I want, I work until the piece is finished in my mind. I don’t direct myself in that way, it’s about “flow.”

M: There seems to be a certain expectation, true or not, that the visual art audience from the Caribbean basin have preconceived notions as to what art is or what art should be. The dichotomies in your work express that. If we compare the latex pieces for instance, stretched on a frame and flat without a frame, points to that. What I’m getting at is, how do you break free from somebody else’s expectations? You know, the “average” art audience knows, Picasso, Warhol, Dali, and Pollack for the most part, so how do you do something different than that (thinking about the poured flat latex pieces) and still have this audience here in Lauderhill specifically accept and embrace lots of difference, including conceptual work?

T: Yes, well, that is kind of our mission here at our Center. We want to give our gallery and the resident artists the opportunity to be more freeform and open to different things.

You haven’t said anything about the digital pieces you’re doing, could you tell me about them?

T: Well, they come from Second Life, you do know what that is, right?

M: Not really. I’ve heard of Second Life but I don’t know what it is.

T: Okay, Second Life is a multiple online role-playing game where you can create a character, an avatar, and the environment for that character. So, what I did was set up a studio in Second Life with a gallery and a loft living space. I took it as an opportunity to learn how to build in 3-D. So, I go around and take pictures of myself and other people. I’m like a photographer. It is the same kind of thing as a memory capture of another version of me, but I admit to sometimes using the game as a substitute for working with 3-D sculpture proper. I have, however, created a couple of maquettes in Second Life that I used with a couple of proposals. So, that has been helpful.

So these pieces (see image above) are photos of my avatar that I have photographed in the game and printed out and applied to canvas including some painting. Her name is XhyraGraf. Even though most of my recent work has been in Second Life, my sculptural practice has remained important and that is where I’m currently refocusing my energies.

M: Well, thank you Tonietta for allowing me into your studio for this little visit and interview.

T: You’re most welcome.

[Afterword by Ms. Walters: Actually, the work itself is not at all a place of discomfort or struggle and is also a place for the finding of answers. The discomfort is balancing the time to do the work with obligations and making sure I don’t bring baggage to the process.

But, this is about your (the interviewer, Onajide Shabaka’s) interpretation.

I am  probably at a place of discomfort now but it has nothing to do with the artwork — more with reconciling with the fact that I am  a bit disconnected from  the work and allowing myself to claim  my time as my own so I can reconnect with the work.

Sometimes it is challenging, yes [in the way familiar to most artists] but the kind of challenge that my art practice provides is the only place I am  comfortable. I use the word ‘practice’ much as a doctor or psychiatrist would open up private practice. It in no way means I am  unsure of what my skills are or what I am  doing or the kind of results I am  hoping to achieve.]

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The Prisoner’s Dilemma at CIFO / Interview with curator Leanne Mella


The current exhibition at CIFO is titled: The Prisoner’s Dilemma: Selections from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection. The show is curated by Leanne Mella, a contemporary art curator, specializing in American artist’s work in film, video, performance, photography and new media. The works in this exhibition comment upon, confront and challenge strategies of totalizing power and social control. Among the works on display are Stan Douglas’ Mess Hall, Isla de Pinos (2005), Alexandre Arrechea’s El Espacio Alterado (2004), and Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (We are the Objects of Your Suave Entrapments), 1984.

Miami Art Exchange founder and editor Onajidé Shabaka spoke with Leanne Mella about the exhibition at the occasion of the Opening Brunch at CIFO, Miami / Florida, on December 5, 2008.

PS: Interview with CIFO chief curator Cecilia Fajardo-Hill on VernissageTV.

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Ruben Torres Llorca

Rubén Torres-Llorca Artworks

Rubén Torres-Llorca Artworks

Rubén Torres-Llorca Artworks

Rubén Torres-Llorca Artworks

Interview: Rubén Torrés Llorca

by Onajídé Shabaka – June, 2005

Shabaka: I remember when I met you back in 1995-96. Why did you choose Miami as a residence as opposed to any other place you could have gone as an émigré from Cuba?

Torrés Llorca: Before I moved to Miami I lived in Sao Paulo for one year, Buenos Aires one year, and Mexico City two years and a half. I had not planned on living in the U.S. because I knew living here was very difficult. I had few friends here but, I am very close with my friends. Friends are very important to me.

I always wanted to be an artist. It is one of the few jobs in the world where you can get paid for what you love to do. The market in those other countries was very difficult. In Mexico City I was able to eek out a living but, it was not something I could count on as permanent. And, the Cuban Embassy was trying to make me return to Cuba. My son was born in Mexico City and I decided that my son was not going to grow up in a society like that, the life of a refugee. I didn’t want him to pass through the same things that I had passed through. So, instead of returning to Cuba, I decided to try the United States, like I had tried the other countries and, Miami was the logical place because I had a couple of friends here. Also, a number of galleries here in Miami were interested in showing my work: Fred Snitzer, Gutierrez, if you remember them.

When I arrived here in April is was so hot. I thought I was going to die. In Cuba, even though it gets hot there is always a cool breeze blowing to keep things tolerable. And when I went through the city and saw the lack of architecture and, that was SO different than Mexico City or Buenos Aires, which are gorgeous cities. I said to myself, “Oh, what is this place! What have I gotten myself into?”

If you remember, at that moment it was impossible to see even good art cinema. The cultural options were so few, so little. Nobody knew anything about the books I wanted to buy. I used to go to book stores where people knew everything about the books they were selling. There were very few art exhibitions and few galleries. There was just no comparison with what I had seen in Havana, Argentina or, Mexico.

Now we’re hearing that Miami is such a great place for art and, that’s good and all but, there’s still not yet a generation of artists from Miami from which there is a something like we had with the MoCA exhibition, “Defining the Nineties.”

Shabaka: This was an exhibition that said in Miami, NYC and, Los Angeles, there were some specific artists that defined or, summed up, a moment in contemporary art.

Torrés Llorca: Right now we have a commercial moment with Art Basel Miami Beach and, it is mostly related to money. And, money is the worse enemy of art.

Shabaka: Were you in attendance in Arté Americas which just ended a week or so ago?

Torrés Llorca: Yes, I was there. It was a quality show. By that I mean that more than 60% of the galleries had very good work. You know, for an artist we sometimes get very bored with the work at art fairs but, this one was good.

Shabaka: However good the fair was, the general consensus was that Arté Americas failed to promote the fair adequately and, galleries were very upset about poor attendance and sales.

Torrés Llorca: Yes, that is true. One well connected collector that I know only found a small article in a local newspaper and rush over during his lunch hour on closing day to see the show. They didn’t seem to spend the money on the marketing for what is basically a commercial venture. From the cultural standpoint it was great in that there were museum quality works from a wide variety of artists. But, there were also some very interesting young artists.

A gallery from Puerto Rico showed very interesting work on child abuse, a very difficult subject, that was well balanced and not overly political.

Shabaka: It’s pretty obvious an artist needs to change and grow during his or her career. When we first met you were making more 3-dimensional works. I’m curious as to why your most recent pieces seem more 2-dimensional. Can you talk a bit about that?

Torrés Llorca: What you probably don’t know about me is that even though I was doing sculpture at that phase, I was trained as a painter. As you know, most of my sculpture, you cannot go around them. They are not truly 3-dimensional. Part of the reason I decided to do that work when I arrived in Miami is because galleries here didn’t seem to have a problem with making holes in the walls for mounting the works.

However, let me tell you, what pays me to most is to do what I find the most entertaining. It’s boring doing the same type of thing over and, over. I have many interests and, I want to explore them. I want to incorporate painting and photography and sculpture. I want to work with new ideas. I want to have fun. The day I don’t make art is the day I get bored. I don’t care about taking a fifteen day vacation because I love to work. I’m a workaholic. It’s funny though, because I don’t produce a lot. I take my time and, what I don’t like, I destroy.

Shabaka: Can you talk a bit about your overall process of art making?

Torrés Llorca: I grew up in a poor Afro-Cuban neighborhood in Havana. We didn’t go to children’s birthday parties, we went to the saints parties. When I was a young teenager I received a very sophisticated formal education. What I try to do is create a balance between these two worlds from which I come. So, my approach to art making is like a psychologist, or medicine man. You have a problem and for that problem, you have a solution. And, the solution tells you have to do the piece. So, what is going to decide how the piece should be is what the surgeon tries to do. The surgery is related to my personal problem at that moment in my life. I’m trying to come up with a solution to my problems and to continuation with my life. When you understand the problem better, you can deal with it, even if you don’t agree.

You know, sometimes people come to me saying they want a piece like I used to make. I tell them that I cannot do it because I don’t even know how it was made because that moment is gone and we, unfortunately, cannot go back in time in that way. I was a different man at that moment. Twenty years ago I was a different man with different problems that needed solutions.

Shabaka: Twenty years ago!! (both laughing)