Linking Lives Exhibition: Interview with the Artist. Victoria Llorente.
After being part of Linking Lives exhibition, curated by Irene Sánchez Gómez, Victoria Llorente reflects on her art in an interview with Myriam Martínez Gómez.
Before starting the interview, Victoria Llorente confesses that she feels naked because she has forgotten her rings. Craftsmanship is the basis of her art, practice with the body and, above all else, the hands, define all her work to date. Victoria’s practice focuses on ornamental drawings and installations that invite an immersive, sensory experience.
By using materials that evoke both the ethereal and the ancestral, her work merges traditional cultural narratives with modern interpretations, exploring the connection between historical legacies and future possibilities.
Her collaborative work with Raquel González Obregón, ‘OTHER VOICES’, is part of the Linking Lives exhibition. It invites us to reflect on how the city seems to fade into its own noise, dragging with it the voices that fight to be heard.
Their art is born from loneliness, from rootlessness, but also from the shared search for a refuge, a ‘third space’ between Berlin and Madrid that has the opportunity to flourish in BARDO. To reconnect with their roots, the artists turn to the image of the tapestry, a decorative element that not only offers warmth, but also symbolically delimits the borders of an imagined home. In their creative process, they sew and mend fragments of memories, building a mantle that shelters them, a skin that replaces human heat.
Multidisciplinary artist, Victoria acknowledges that her passion for the art world led her to study Fine Arts. Nevertheless, she didn’t know from the start what she wanted to do professionally, and it has not always been an easy path: “Tattooing is something very important in my life because I think it has made me connect with art again. I’ve had many moments in which I have felt totally disconnected from practice and from feeling, from having emotions. Tattooing – the mere fact of starting to draw, looking for designs, to get in contact with another material, with a machine (because I do both hand poke and machine) – ignited something in me, gave me the desire to start working with my hands again and be curious.”
The accelerated pace of content creation marks all creative processes, and also the weariness linked to them. “Nowadays, being an artist means knowing how to do everything, being involved in anything, you have to be always producing, practicing, doing, and for me it is something very tiring. Now I have started doing it because I think I have the energy for it.”
She is crystal clear: her inspiration does not come from an abstract muse. “It is a very complicated process, you have to constantly investigate to generate desire.” In her case, “it is curiosity about materials, about how to generate spaces [with them], what mostly catches my attention. I start to investigate, from practical to theoretical aspects, and suddenly I come across an unknown that could be, for example, the issue of creating spaces through memories, and then I try to find the way in which I feel most comfortable communicating that”.
Along these lines, “‘HABITAR COSIENDO’ [her workshop with Raquel] is born from wanting to bring our practice closer to others, because they always ask us what the process and work methodology has been like – especially the topic of using silicone, the sewing and transferring photos –. But also from the desire we have to open up dialogues around what it means to leave your country of origin, what is ‘home’ and what it means to connect personal memories communally. Above all, we seek to create that connection with others.”
When it comes to forming a community, BARDO – a feminist, FLINTA and migrant space -, opens its doors to all voices seeking their place in Berlin. “The art world is very different depending on the type of institution you are in. In spaces like BARDO, the alternative works and is embraced, but when you go to ‘more formal’ places, more standardized and renowned galleries, I think they are not as open – simply because they are more involved in the commercial aspect, and in the end they cling to what is more traditional, because that is what reaches the most people -”.
At a discursive level: “Depending on the project we’re doing, it’s true that it can be more or less political, but for me is something I do without realizing it many times. I speak from experience, I try to frame my memories and so on. Obviously, political opinions end up coming out, it’s inevitable. Even when I start sewing it is a political act in itself. Other times, it is necessary to actively focus on the fact that I want to talk about something, I want to denounce it. Depending on the space, you are allowed to have a more critical or less critical discourse, for example, about Palestina. Here in BARDO, that’s not a problem at all.”
As a young emerging artist and a woman, “I consider that, personally, I’m not doing badly. And I think it is because I know where I have to go and what spaces I have to approach, what practices I should do and with whom I should create my artistic pieces, above all. But I’m aware that there are situations, for example, when you apply for a scholarship or when you want to do a residency, in which it is very noticeable that being a woman is another key element that is taken into account. Again, depending on which institutions you approach, they give you greater or lesser importance.”
But her future is full of opportunities, “Last year I would have told you that I did art because I liked it, but in reality I knew perfectly well that I was not going anywhere. Now, however, I feel like I can take a risk and say that I could fully work as an artist.” On February 22, at the Azur gallery and part of an event for the Berlinale film festival, she will display her new audiovisual piece. ‘LA PISADA DEL DIABLO’ is a collaborative work with two other artists that alludes to the popular culture of her hometown [San Lorenzo de El Escorial, España].
Victoria wants to continue exploring new ways of closing the gap between the art and the public: “In June, we will, probably, have a piece exhibited at a techno event inside a bunker”. “Sound is also part of my life, my father is a sound technician and in my house it has been very latent, and I have always wanted to generate musical audio pieces and so on. Little by little, I consider that I am getting closer to it and I would like to continue exploring. I think that music is also a material that helps a lot to generate new spaces and I see aspects – although it may not seem like it – artisanal in it, also gestural, that involve the body”.
On the other hand, she’s interested in diverging from what she has done so far: “I specialized in sculpture and audiovisual practices, but I put them aside a bit and I want to return to those practices again. I’m going to exhibit an audiovisual piece in February.” “I find a lot of conflict with digital art because I’m not as good at it as at manual art, but at the same time that’s what hooks me. For me, the most important thing is to work with my hands whenever I can, to enhance the pieces that have been processed by a human, but from there I also want to bring it closer to the opposite now, to generate the same discourse in a different way.”
Between jokes about exhibiting at the MOMA that hide a real aspiration and the nervousness of a first interview as an artist that makes her feel “too serious”, Victoria drops the best advice to do anything: “[it all starts] investigating a little, being a little silly.”
Myriam Martínez Gómez
