Name: Dulce Aguirre.
Location: Mexico City, Mexico.
Website: https://dulceaguirrebarrera.wix.com/art
Brief artists statement:
As Picasso said, ‘Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth’. Art should wake, shake and defy us, and make us think. It shouldn’t be something alienated from everyday life, buried in museums and galleries and accessible just for cultural elite, but a live expression of our times and, also, of the universal human tragedies and joys. In these dark times (we live in a world full of hunger, despair, injustice, etc.), art is a luxury, when instead it should be a common tool whose aim is to remember the “bright side” of mankind: creativity, consciousness, brotherhood, life.
How did you become an artist? Did you always dream of a life in the art-world?
I became an artist by “accident”, meaning that I didn’t one day thought to myself “I wanna be an artist”. As a teenager, I began to draw because I went with a friend to a painting class she wanted to take, and there I discovered I wasn’t so bad, and as a result of that I found a passion and a pleasure for me not comparable with anything else.
Besides that, I studied classical music for a long period of my life. Some years ago, I began experimenting with digital technologies and making digital visual and musical art, and now I’m devoted to it as well as with academic art studies.
How has your education helped your career? I’m currently doing a PhD on History of Art, but I didn’t have formal artistic training besides my years studying classical music. I think academic background has helped me to get in touch with ideas, artists and perspectives I may not otherwise would have known, and has contributed to open my mind in many ways. That said, I don’t think formal education is in any way a requirement to do art. It sure helps in practical terms, but not in terms of creativity or desire to do things.
What are the other influences on your work?
Like anyone, I have been influenced by many, many things. Drawers, painters, sculptors, yes, but also musicians, movie directors, films, graffiti, people, historical events, and so many things in everyday life that it would be impossible to make an easier account. I think the biggest influence on anyone is your own life, how you live it and by what principles.
What was the last exhibition you visited?
“Diego Rivera: Murals for the MoMa”, in New York City.
What is your favourite art gallery?
Any gallery that is open to artists who are not in the institutionalized “art world”.
What are your experiences of the ‘art-world’ and the business of art?
More than never, these days the art promoted and celebrated in the “art world”, is a consuming product in which it appears the form (the “contemporary” formats, the discourses that “justify” the ouvres, etc.) counts more than the contents. That I find very sad and demining.
Do you have a quotation that you keep coming back to and that keep you going? Have you a motto that gets you through?
“Eyes wide open”, which is the title of a King Crimson’s song. That title, as well as the whole lyric of that song, resumes for me the attitude one must have in this world, not just to do art but to do anything and don’t let yourself be numbed by the apparent “comforts” and “natural” order of things.
Do you or would you use assistants to make your work?
No, I don’t and wouldn’t.
Do you use social networks? if so, how and which ones do you find most useful?
Yes. I use Wix for my website and Facebook to be more connected with people and to promote my work.
Which artist should we all look up immediately?
Besides the old masters, from whom any artist have a whole lot to learn, there’s a lot of contemporary or not so well known artists we should be looking up! Some of them are old (or even dead), and others are working right know: Barbara Kruger, Pavel Puhov, colectivo “La Pistola”, Banksy, Kathe Köllwitz, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Hans Bellmer, “El Chango” García Cabral… just to mentione a few.
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