A Constant State of Becoming Exhibition: Interview with the Artist. Lucía Szych.
After being part of A Constant State of Becoming exhibition, curated by Marcela Villanueva, Lucía Szych reflects on her art in an interview with Myriam Martínez.
Who are you?
I’m currently in a period of transition and re-construction of myself. I studied graphic design in Buenos Aires (Argentina). I took courses and workshops in sculpture, drawing, printmaking and screen printing. And that shaped my way of working, developed how I like to engage with artistic work — both the craft and the themes —. My artist persona emerged when I arrived in Berlin, around 2015. The winter here gave me a lot of time to develop my craft. I started making installations and drawings — I was lucky enough to have the space to do so —, which is what I like to do most and what I continue to explore. I’ve always worked a lot with things I found on the street, with natural elements (leaves, branches, etc.).
What’s your inspiration?
On the one hand, I really enjoy touching materials, engaging with the body. Being away from home, walking through an unfamiliar city, greatly inspired my work with found objects, too. It made me look at the unknown with even greater curiosity, wandering and collecting things that catched my attention. And then, in the studio, I feel like I look at them in a new light. Experimentation is very important to me.
How do you experiment in your creative process?
By making mistakes and not planning too much. I work a lot with powdered graphite — which is a very volatile material, it stains a lot —. Everything gets dirty, and I like that. It’s what I enjoy the most: grabbing the paper and leaving the imprint of my hands, having things on the table that have nothing to do with what I’m doing — but that almost unintentionally creep into the work.
For example, the etching and ink I used in “Alphabet of Distances”, part of the exhibition “A Constant State of Becoming” at Bardo, allowed me to play with that “messiness” a lot. I produce a lot and then look at the material again. I also really like methods of reproduction. When I draw, I even sort of copy myself a little; I do one thing and then want to do the same thing. And in that same-but-different way of doing it, the meaning of each work is formed.
How to grasp the soundscape that surrounds us? This Alphabet consists of a series of etchings made out of sound traces. From the premise that sound, and therefore spoken language, goes through us, makes us vibrate and transforms us, using the etching technique, Lucía created this “Alphabet of Distances”. Each drawing emerges from a metal plate with powder that vibrates above a speaker during 60 seconds. Based on her personal experience through familiar words transformed into foreign images she aims to rethink the experiences of foreignness and familiarity; the result is a variety of words translated into spoken-drawings to reflect on the complexity of dislocation.
How did the idea for this exhibition come about?
When I arrived in Berlin, german was very confusing and difficult for me. I was so affected by the language, the sound, that I wanted to make it something visual out of it. So I made some videos reflecting on how these sounds I heard while walking through the city, different from the ones I knew, resonated within me. How that vibration changed my body. I worked with different materials and recorded its movements to that vibration to show it.
“Alphabet of Distances” continues to explore that idea, but this time I wanted to capture that movement in an image. I thought a lot about translations — about switching from one language to another, from one thing to another, how I transcribe or rewrite words —. I wanted to be able to capture a final image of the words, something like a photograph. And I had a metal plate with powder on it that I could place over the sound and print, so that’s what I used.
Your work is predominantly installation, even in the case of drawings.
I think it has to do with exploring the materiality and putting the body into it I mentioned before. Sometimes I start with a drawing and then go to the space; others I start in the space and then go to the drawing. I think of it more as drawing in the air than making an installation. And because of it, my work has changed a lot. If a new space appears, I like to “play” with it. I have to see what can be done there, rearranging the elements in a different way — and that keeps evolving.
I always want to go to larger scales, and installations allow me to do that. Also, although installations take up space, they can be dismantled very quickly. I like the idea of it being a “at that time, in that place or you miss it” kind of thing. But then the question of what to do with the work, once you’ve shown it, arises. Ultimately, I need the work to be transportable and easy to store and move, and that obviously also influences and limits my work — not in a bad way, it just sets some “rules” for it. For me, making installations like this, sort of resolves the conflict that the changing spaces can entail.
You’ve mentioned before that you were in a moment of discovery and transition.
My work used to have black and white, geometrical and more austere elements, but recently I’ve been producing much more stained, chaotic and expressive drawings. In “Alphabet of Distances”, I attribute certain colors to certain words, based a bit on how I feel about them, for example. But I said that mainly because I had a baby. I’m figuring out how to reconnect with my time, how to create again. Now I’m writing a little more about artistic practice — about the questions I ask myself about it — than drawing, for example.
What was it like being part of “A Constant State of Becoming” exhibition?
The girls and I were already working together, in a way: we meet and talk — about our artworks, our concerns, a bit of everything — all the time. But I was very interested in doing something with them in a more “professional” way. When the idea of doing it alongside Karne Kunst came up, it was the icing of the cake. The artist gatherings, the different events, etc. I was very interested in the space itself, but also in the idea of the communal aspect they foster there. I really like to be alone and draw alone, but I also need to talk with other people, share the space, see what they’re doing. It enriches me and my work.
Myriam Martínez
