The Sublime meets Social Awareness
Drew First
As themes of populism and democracy sweep European summer exhibitions, a few European artists are finding trend inspiration enough to revitalize and reinvent social radicalism in contemporary art. Spain’s Núria Castro is one. Castro’s recent body of work marries the limitless possibilities of Photoshop to a New Age sensibility. Castro studied fashion design in Madrid before moving to the United States for a year. In 2003, she returned to school where she studied etching and print. It was after this point that she began exploring the effects of technology in art. A year away from opening her engraving workshop in the Andalusian city of Úbeda, she is currently producing a video art project for the 2006 Second International Congress of Soundtracks Ciudad de Úbeda and typography for a Universidad Popular project in Úbeda.
Drew First: There are four venues that are holding an exhibition called "Populism." Would you say that Europe’s young artists are trying to incorporate social consciousness in their art more so right now than at other times?
Nuria Castro: I think that more now than ever the world needs to be aware of its problems and the dangers threatening it. We live in a world where three quarters of the world is hungry or starving; where there are still millions of slaves; where armed conflicts and weapons of mass destruction are threatening total or partial destruction of the world. We are living in apocalyptic times, a crucial moment in history that calls for this kind of awareness. I think this feeling can be seen reflected in the work of young artists from Europe who, just like me, are using art to raise awareness.
DF: Today, irreverence seems to be on the forefront of artistic expression, acting as a backlash to a highly organized and reactionary state of art and world. Do you agree?
NC: Because art adopts the shape of protest, many dogmas that have sought to become perennial have disappeared. Art is also inherently a means to universal communication, which gives it the responsibility of being a mediator to make this one a better world. And, of course, I want to be part of this.
DF: What is the message behind your current body of work?
NC: That question is precisely my motive. It’s my desire; it’s what causes me uneasiness and makes me further myself. As I have already shown, I firmly believe that behind my work there is a message that is offered and has to be decoded. That’s why I don’t seek to represent. I think my visual influences are all the works I have ever seen assimilated subconsciously. I absorb art like a sponge–it becomes a part of me. So, my work will inevitably reflect influences of my collective memory.
DF: There also seems to be a pervading sense of an individual’s place in society, the world and maybe the universe in your work. Now, this is an interpretation of mine, but I’d like for you to share you thoughts on this.
NC: Of course, it has a lot to do with man’s place in society, the world and the universe. Beyond that, it has to do with the man we forgot to be. My art has to do with the reconstruction of our inner light so that we may be guided back to our origins and the pure essence of being.
DF: You use computers and scanners to produce, what you call, an altered reality in art. What do you think about the increasingly close relationship between artists and their computers?
NC: It means artists evolve; we deepen our aims. Working with the machine gives you the ability to look through a different reality. It subjects our realities to different ones, changing our intrinsic sense of the established state of things. So, our reality is crossed by a different angle that, like a lens, widens the field of vision and our perception of ourselves. And so this increasingly close relationship with the machine takes us closer to ourselves because it frees us and lets us coexist with a universal knowledge that has been banish from our memory–lost in a time of sedentary life.
DF: How do you think this challenges the art world’s presiding concept of originality?
NC: It affects while it democratizes art, making it accessible to everyone. Art’s exclusivity disappears, fostering an arena for communication rather than currency exchange.
DF: Which is more difficult, to paint or draw your works or to manipulate them on the computer?
NC: The level of difficulty is the same.
DF: Tell me more about the organic versus the electronic side to your art.
NC: I am also in to painting, sculpting and engraving, but what I try to express goes further than an organic quality or method. Anyway, I think that any artistic expression, electronic or not, will be able to acquire an organic nature given that everything will eventually become a fossil or trace of its time.
DF: How do you think artists like yourself and digital art might enfranchise more people to go out and appreciate art–a true democratization of art?
NC: If we expose our anxieties through our art–by creating works that need people to think through them and go deep to discover them. People need to learn to look and learn to find meaning.
