Amor Muñoz | Mexico, D.F., 1979 | visual artist and cultural manager.
Click: INTERWIEW/ Amor Muñoz
Although is there is a tendency to find graphics in the work of Amor Muñoz, the supports are completely de-contextualized. In her multidisciplinary work, we can find a chewing-gum dress, a prostitute’s shoes, as well as functional graphical expanded articles. Subtle results with strong critics. — Artecocodrilo
TCR: What can you tell us about the contemporary art scene in Mexico?
AM: It’s beginning to have more amplitude for us who form the Mexican art circle. In the past, the scenes were centered in the institutions (government), and there existed isolated cases of independent spaces. Nowadays we have an international fair of contemporary art (Zone MACO), the market is stronger with the opening of more galleries, some of these shows have great international projection, as well as the most important private collection of contemporary art in Latin America: Jumex collection. Today what is most interesting is the initiative of the own artists who open independent and commercial spaces, the artists who do work of cultural or curatorial management. We see a system that is more complete: The Institutions (Legitimating), galleries (commercialization), and independent/emergent projects (self-management and commercialization). It is impossible not to mention some Mexican artists who are well known internationally (Gabriel Orozco, Teresa Margolles, Dr. Lakra, etc), as well as the new generation of young artists that begin to have important projections to fairs and festivals abroad.
For me, the most representative scenes where something really has been happening, without being in Mexico City (where its all centralized), are the scenes of Tijuana and recently Oaxaca. The street art, the public art have expanded and gained acceptance in the institutions and galleries. This recount sounds optimist. It seems to me that in general terms, contemporary graphics (including drawing) and Mexican electronic art, are in a very interesting moment, and I would bet to these two as exciting future genres.
TCR: What do you consider advantages or disadvantages of producing in the city?
AM: I think there are more advantages. Mexico City can be difficult and chaotic, but the production advantages are countless. The raw materials and the labor are very cheap. My studio is in the Centro Historico, the area where the most important commerce of the city is concentrated. I can’t complain, everything is accessible, everything is there, including the inspirations given from the streets, characters, and folklore.
TCR: You constantly use embroidery in your artwork. Does it have relation to the tradition of embroidery passed down in women that exists in Mexico?
AM: The embroidering has been delegated to women by generations, but not always has been an exclusive activity of women. In the Middle Ages, for example, the embroidered works of tapestry were in controlled and run by men. It refers to tradition, to the handmade, occupational therapy, to leisure, and as you say, often to the feminine influence. I have four years working with embroidery, the textile part in my work has been a fundamental resource. The values and skills that you receive when drawing with thread is unique, it becomes tactile and creates an intimate link between the work and the spectator, creates a desire to touch the piece. Mixing that tactile character of the work with intimacy and sexual imagery gives it a fascinating result.
TCR: We can say then that the leisure time acts as a trigger?
AM: Sure, I think leisure is the mother of great ideas, not everything is physical work. Much in the art and science has to do with the leisure, the contemplation, the reflection, the observation, and this creates an inventive capacity. In 2008, I created a project called “Diagramas del tedio,” where the embroidering was activated again as expanded graph, with a peculiar speech from the context of this theme. Leisure as creative provocation links to occupational therapy, associated to textile work and emotional environment. These embroiderings freeze and position different fragments of time in a graphic scene where I realize actions and interventions in objects. In the installation I positioned these objects next to the artwork, interlaced in the space and temporality like one active succession of elements.
TCR: What you think about contemporary handmade production in this technological and electronic time?
AM: It’s a fact that the artists are adapting their processes to present industrial production systems. Every time we see an art fair, pieces are no longer made by the hand of the artist, but processed by a router, a cutting laser, produced through a printer, or 3D, etc. Electronic art is taking a more important place in the art biennales, speeches around technology and science are more frequent.
In spite of all of this, it is fantastic to find anywhere in the world artists who are retaking artisan means, hand making production. Artists who extend their formal and conceptual speech to processes that have to do with these subjects mentioned before, the leisure, the occupational therapy, the manual, the analog, the re-value of the work, doesn’t matter how long it takes to make a piece, you can make only one piece in six months, doesn’t look for the immediacy or the temporary efficiency, but the effectiveness and the tactile, intimate and artisan result.
TCR: Talk about the pornographic images and interventions?
AM: I don’t know if the word is naive, but I think of it all more like “Fetishist.” It is a game with an intention of transgression, an exposition of several edges, those clothes refer to innocence, sweetness, the incorruptibility, the untouchable, and the fact to take them as an object for drawing with pornographic imaginary gives the work a strong disturbing load. It is as if a hemisphere of my brain took care of the refinement of each of my pieces, while the other struggles to scandalize and penetrate the spectator.
TCR: Tell us more about the project in course of the mobile factory.
AM: At the moment I am constructing “FARO del Oriente,” a vehicle for the project “Maquila Region 4.” Is about a expandable mobile factory to assemble textile art pieces with people of the streets .The periphery of Mexico City is ideal for this kind of processes. I will make a route from the factory to several points in the city. In each visited spot we will do a collective piece embroidered with electronic imagery, and some of the pieces will have functionality. The idea to relate the textile with the electronic is because of the history of the manufacturing plants in Mexico. For many years we were one of the main countries assembling clothes and electronic parts, and now all the manufacturing has gone away to China and some other Asian countries, leaving Mexico with unemployment, contaminations, and unfortunately really poor health consequences of all the ex-workers.