Here it’s Peace: my talk at the SDAI

Tuesday night at the SDAI

I arrive at the San Diego Art Institute around 5:30. I am a bit nervous: it is the first time I am talking in English in front of a group of people. Also I know the time is short and I would like to say a lot of things! I am happy to see my friends. There are also people I don’t know. Kevin Freitas arrives. He told me he would come and he did, I appreciate that. People take some time to look at the paintings and the digital prints and then we start. Dan Adams, who has a solo show at the same time at the SDAI, talks first. It gives me some time to relax! Then I am on.

video – part 1 I start talking about the release of Ingrid Betancourt. I cannot believe it happens now, during the show, while this large portrait of her is on the wall here! I talk about the portrait, why I did it after reading excerpts of the letter she wrote to her mother last November. I talk about the title of the exhibition, I explained the timeline between 2000 and 2008 and also what happened before, in Paris. The monotypes in Santa Fe, my work inspired by archeology and geology.

video – part 2 I moved a lot with my family. I stopped painting for a few years when my children were very little. We finally moved to San Diego which is a place I love. Then I talk about new beginning of my work, with a different content, the desire to put more of my life and the world around me in my paintings and images. The complicated question of how to mix what happens in my daily life with things happening in the larger world. What I tried to do in this painting is really to reduce the distance between those events and me. For example the painting with Gandhi [“life at the Border”]. “Here it’s Peace, there it’s War”: of course some things happen which are not so far, and for me the situation at the border is very complicated, I have a hard time understanding what is going on and I wanted to express that. It’s here. I put a self portrait in it and it is smiley, but there is nothing to smile about with the situation at the border. It is because we live our daily lives anyway. Things happen at the border, people die and I still live my daily life."

video – part 3 About the painting: “march 17, 2008”, a day of news in the world. I reached a point where I was ready to put everything I learned together. I have no shame about it. Yes, I work my images on a computer. No, I don’t paint with strokes and that’s fine. It took time for me to say “why not flat, I like flat”. And I also like strokes, of course, but not for me, not now. And that’s why the shift was interesting because suddenly something happened, I used my photos through Photoshop and it is like a washing machine, I try everything.

video – part 4 Being aware of what is going on in contemporary art today. Why do I paint?

More videos of the talk to come (see July 17, 2008).