Shirley Rebuffo: Where did you study and what was that stage like?
Lilian Rosales: Although I have been painting and drawing since I was very young, one could say that for years it was an alternative activity to my work as a journalist. At that time I was a journalist who painted and rubbed shoulders with some painters with no other intention than to obtain an interview or a report on them as a figure, although I was lucky at the time to exhibit my work in halls around the country. At the Universidad Andrés Bello in Caracas, Venezuela, I studied the degrees of Audiovisual Communication and Journalism. Later in Spain, I did an Master Business Administration at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. As for painting, I am basically self-taught.
It all started without any pretension. The artistic activity during my stay in Venezuela constituted an urgent alternative resource of expression, an opportunity for catharsis and, finally, the acquisition and development of a language that would facilitate me -without notice- to enter exhibition halls (with individual or collective exhibitions) and above all, the establishment of a closer contact with artists and masters of Venezuelan art such as Manuel Piney, Darwin Araujo (who died recently), Gabriel Bracho, Omar Patiño, Oswaldo Vigas and Edgard Queipo, among others. From the exchange of impressions and some courses I took with them, a more serious intention to continue along these lines was born, an idea that gained ground over the years, driven by the acceptance and good appreciation of my work.
SR: What was it like to change countries? Was there a change of vision for art, for your work?
LR: It has been a hard experience, especially because the decision was a consequence of a deep crisis in my country (Venezuela) which at that time was not even remotely deep enough to reach over the years but which, in the end, generated its first expulsions of professionals in search of opportunities and foreseeing the scenario that would later make news in the world media. My father used to say that emigrating was like being a victim of a fire, and how right he was. It's better to exercise detachment from material things -the ones you left behind-, from certainties you built for your own protection and that of your family, and assume that change that requires infinite flexibility, continuous reflection, unshakable faith and, finally, knowing how to read between the lines the meaning of life until you recover the new rhythm.
Without a doubt, this change in my own existence meant a profound change in my interior and in that of my family, a turnaround in my vision of life and, consequently, in my way of expressing it, which has become evident over the years. That urgency I spoke of overcame the lack of materials I had to work with and influenced my incursion into the use of other techniques such as Indian ink, other more modest supports, and my incursion into drawing as a finished work and not as a sketch for a painting.
On the other hand, the condition of immigrant for political reasons, knowing that a good part of the people themselves have been left in the middle of a lethal crisis, in a country that is falling apart, cannot go unnoticed, not even with an ocean in between. The pain becomes a companion that fills the backpack and one must know how to drain it to continue the journey. Not only by doing this creative therapy but by putting art at the service of denouncing the inequalities throughout the world, without distinction of flags or ideologies, because in the end the victims end up being victims of each end of the political spectrum, specifically of selfishness and the blindness of power. The pain itself and the perception of the one that afflicts others, in its most edifying version (in a sort of sublimation) also allows to recreate new and possible scenarios, utopias that like oxygen balls feed a positive, useful and transferable attitude to my job as a journalist. In this context, despite the fact that I never abandoned the exercise, art began to gain ground during my stay in Spain; opportunities for new exhibitions arose, forcing me to live in this expressive duality whose dynamics are now indivisible and immensely useful to me.
On the other hand, this art-journalism binomial has given rise to very interesting and nourishing links with other artists, with other visions, allowing me to be part of an amalgam of Latin American creatives that throbs in the heart of Barcelona, artists of different generations that in that warp formed between novices and veterans of the stature of Ricardo Benaim, open new spaces for dialogue from the territory of art itself, constituting an interesting contribution from exile to contemporary art made in Spain.
SR: Tell me an episode of your life that you think has marked you to follow the path of art. When did you start painting?
LR: My maternal grandfather when he saw me for 5 hours (maybe he exaggerated) lying on the floor in a kind of trance recreating my imaginary world, sentenced: "This girl is going to be a painter". I was 6 years old and my adoration for that activity was extraordinary and the only one marked by self-discipline. Drawing and then painting has been a vital activity that I have never been able to rid myself of. It was a rather intimate activity. Probably the turning point was a commissioned mural that I did when I was still a child. It released adrenaline, noradrenaline and other hormones in spurts. Since then I need that trance to give meaning to my existence.
SR: Do you suffer from nostalgia?
LR: What outcast doesn't feel nostalgia? A bad son of the land...
How not to feel it? The Greeks who, for obvious reasons, were some advanced ones that marked the western civilization in the elaboration of the globalizing conception of man and his destiny, already knew in that time of the devastating effect of nostalgia, turning the exile in the worst condemnation, in the capital punishment par excellence. A punishment worse than death. Their idea was based on the fact that the exiled, who possessed memory as an attribute, was aware of his destruction when he was erased from history.
The artist in exile has an inexcusable duty to the culture he integrates, to the very history of his people - which is not only that of the country that gave birth to him - but of that territory without borders in which the whole of humanity lives and which, deep down, demands commitment to look more inward in an era of great distractions. The artist in exile feeds on nostalgia, yes, sometimes on discouragement and adversity to highlight his own vulnerability, that which has been rediscovered by the whole world during the days of the pandemic. The artist in exile, from this awareness of his own vulnerability, raises his strength and thus vindicates his condition as "part of an indivisible whole", becoming more empathetic and, therefore, closer to the possibility of representing the ominous testimony of death and its counterpart in the intimate memories of life while celebrating in gratitude. As Galeano said (Days and nights of love and war) "to be alive is a small victory" is to be able to be happy despite the goodbyes and crimes.
Nostalgia is also restorative, it counteracts the effects of distance when it helps to rebuild the lost place and creates a collective memory about exile, when it meditates about space and time, creating a symbolic space that also has anthropological value.
SR: What is your favorite means of expression?
LR: I move irremediably in three dimensions: narrative, photography and painting as far as creation is concerned. I can't do without any of them because in view of my unfaithful condition in expression, they offer me the variety and complementarity I require.
SR: What would you say is the most difficult thing to represent?
LR: There is nothing difficult to represent as long as creation is such an intimate and subjective exercise. I believe that in the path of creation everyone has their own Achilles' heel: for some the technical aspect, for others the object represented, the emotions, for example. What is difficult, in fact, is to live from painting when you are not a consecrated artist.
SR: Ochre reigns in your color palette, filling in "sands" and impacting the retinas. What emotional values do you think this color brings to your work?
LR: I confess that in a good part of my work warm colors are the rule that prevails. In relation to the Zulos show in particular, it is certainly the ochres that populate that universe and refer us back to the theme of nostalgia, the past and nostalgia, insofar as it is an element of rigor in the subject matter that I deal with and which has to do with the castrating reality that some migrants face and which is unfailingly related to the immediate past and the sense of loss.
I start, fundamentally, from the emotions, which provide me with a kind of reflex arc that ends up on the fly by choosing the palette. However, I do not deny that I have present in a more experimental way the psychological, symbolic or aesthetic values of color, the interactions and chromatic harmonies, but I prefer to leave the biased analysis of these resources to those who interpret my work.
SR: What technique do you use to elaborate your works?
LR: I worked for a long time on medium to large format canvases with a mixed technique involving acrylic painting, oil pastel and color pencils. On canvas I like to use a palette knife to add textures (impasto), also scumbling and glazing. I enjoy working with putties, salts and the like. Although honestly at the time of work I respond to a pulse and these names do not tell me anything. It is the inner demand translated into urgency that moves me to do one thing or another on the canvas, wood or cardboard.
On the other hand, I work the illustrations on textured paper or cardboard. For this I prefer to use ink, sometimes acrylic and I even experiment with post-production in Illustrator.
SR: Where do you find inspiration?
LR: In one's own concerns and questions about existence, its meaning and purpose. In the emotions that move us, in the existential anguish in universal terms, in the denunciation of the injustices, the inequities, and in the insight within one's own memory as a guide that, coming from the past, projects alternatives for the future in an assertive way.
The pandemic was, for example, an event that triggered a special work on those universal questions that, as subjects, I believe we must ask ourselves and try to answer.
SR: How important do you think reflection on the feminine is in your body of work?
LR: Obviously, real art is neither male nor female, but human.
Until the 20th century women had been the object of art, objectified, muses, models or companions. Between the beginning of the 20th century and the 1970s, European and North American artists, from cubists to representatives of Pop Art, maintained that idea that justified the persistence of women's subordination to men. They were merely objects of possession and desire. They were represented instead of representatives. Beyond joining the more than justified struggle for egalitarian rights, I believe it is necessary to highlight the feminine view of the world and its reflection that can contribute much to redirecting the destiny of humanity. In the end, it is a world in which we all fit.
In this respect, there is still a long way to go, and I believe that the feminine vision must enter once and for all, and through the big door, into the debate on important issues, and give universal answers about the meaning of one's own existence - that of all: men and women - in the task of designing a more egalitarian and just world model.
The holistic view of women, welcomes with a special balance the cognitive and the affective, are balance and harmony, which every day is more urgent in global terms.
I see the world through women's eyes, intelligence and sensibility, which is why I am very concerned about our still limited participation in culture, in the present, in fundamental decision-making.
SR: Do you work on your memories and experiences?
LR: I work on reflections and impulses. The memories that I bring back serve me to put in value the present and to project scenarios to the future, the scenarios that I hate to see and those that I yearn for the good of humanity.
SR: What attracts you to the oneiric?
LR: Without a doubt it is a world necessary for one's own equilibrium and fascinating as a source-resource for creation, because it has no justification or boundaries and it investigates the volitional processes of each subject. Creation based on the dream is born in complete freedom. Its interpretation has no limits. What space can be more coveted than this? I am not a friend of the parapets.
I like sometimes, but not always, to get away from reality as we know it. I enjoy the experience of creating a kind of crack through which people can look out and contemplate, reflect on universal issues from their own experience, like someone looking in a mirror.
But it is my painting that has more to do with that world of the dream than the illustration itself. And that is because the former is for me the main activity, my passport to freedom, to my own reflections. The second can sometimes respond to certain predetermined guidelines, since some works are the product of commissions, others have been destined for competitions, and only those that are freelance are painted with the oneiric and/or surrealist as a liberation of the psyche and an invitation to continue dreaming and directing our attention towards ideals. Without them, without the utopias, I believe that all individuals (including myself) would be anchored in mediocrity, fear, conformity, inequality and oppression.
SR: In which artistic movement would you frame your works?
LR: I hate labels and categories, although I understand that they are necessary insofar as they allow us to understand and organize the world around us. But I can't abstract myself and forget that they also constitute a reductionist and sometimes dangerous kind of reality that we try to understand. I hate hashtags and being a journalist I have been forced to learn how to use them, but I confine them to oblivion every time I can or I mix them up with a certain carelessness to change their meaning. So when I hang a picture on my Instagram account, people often ask me, "Why did you put the hashtag from #people_and_world on some wired poles? And there I get caught in the connections I make between an object or objects like the wireframe, and the idea of "old links" that refer me to the human. Why can't I use that hashtag then? I understand that, if I evaluate it according to that counting visits, traffic and likes I am really out. But since that is not my interest but rather my enjoyment in sharing that idea of the world, I have nothing left to do but laugh at those who reproach me for the misuse of a tool, that on the other hand is paradoxical, being a journalist.
However, as a last resort, surrealism affects a good part of my work in an unequivocal way.
SR: Do you think that your work as a journalist has helped you or on the contrary has taken time away from the development of your artistic work?
LR: Combining both activities is often complicated as we are subject to the finitude of time. I have always wanted my body to perform more than it can because my head doesn't stop. But apart from this insurmountable fact, it's all about profit. The job of a journalist is wonderful for someone who embodies an artist. By professional default, it refines its gaze towards surroundings (or at least that is what it should do) and deepens the paradox of increasing empathy, while demanding distance from the facts and their protagonists in pursuit of utopian objectivity. It is an exercise of contamination between both disciplines, of coming and going, which creates very strong links with humanity through commitment, which permanently forces us to try to formulate those universal questions and to project possible solutions. All that I describe there is also the germ that feeds my creation with a kind of voracious appetite looking for an echo in others because I understand that only connected we can build.
SR: What role do you think the egos of others play in your work?
LR: Everything as long as my work is an imposture before them, and certainly not Freud's ego (self), nor the equivalent of self-love. I refer to that individualistic or narcissistic ego, the one linked to selfishness, which is much closer to the Freudian "it" (individual needs).
This pandemic has shown us the need to emphasize our condition as social subjects. The collective is imperative so that society is strengthened and the individual as a unit enjoys certain securities. Behind all this is the necessary social justice that I will not tire of demanding. It's like having a tapestry with a beautiful figure that, seen as a whole, is red but that, when you approach it, is made up of very small threads of tonalities that go from red to white, and even to any other alternative color. The red that predominates seems to be the "essential" and irreplaceable one, but it is enough to pull another small thread to ensure that the fabric is dismantled, putting at risk the form and the concept as a whole. That is what we are doing in sustaining a society of injustices and I believe that the covid-19 has come as a reminder of how much interdependence exists between one and the other, and that in the end it is worthless to flaunt power or wealth when a threat like this puts us all on an equal footing.
That is the lesson of the pandemic, a reminder, a mirror for those who embody those red threads, so that the egos and the self-styled powerful remember that their survival is also contingent on the well-being of the white threads.
