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In life and creation, the adaptation of the human being is given by advances, changes and different ways of thinking. Although our background asks us to advance in what we already know, reality makes us think differently. We approach new ways of thinking and we do it through new dialectics and the development that accompanies them; we do it well… but sometimes we lack a point of cohesion for its total understanding.
Analyzing and reflecting on this, the trick is to approach them from the native, from the very birth that makes you shape the world in a very different way: Real – Subtle – Dynamic and transgressive…
Lola Zoido (Badajoz, 1994), conforms herself as a mentor in contemporary artistic creation and makes us flow through her work in a natural and close way. Adaptation and creation, she reminds us of the great truth “Be water my friend”.
Lola, here we go! The first time I interviewed you, it was on the radio for a program where we talked about digital art, 3 years later I come back to you, to talk about ART without labels and for you to illustrate how ideas and screens materialize in our world.
Wow three years already. It feels like three lives, but also like three months hahaha, nothing like talking about screens while I’m tapping my fingers on my mobile to answer this interview.
Where do you come from and where are you going?
I have spent most of my life between my village, Zafra (Badajoz) and Seville, where I studied Fine Arts. Then I went to Madrid like many others looking for a change of scenery. And where I’m going I don’t know, but what is certain is that lately my work has revolved quite a lot around that.
What words do you think define your work?
I guess it depends on who you ask. For me, one of them would definitely be research. I consider myself a very curious person and I have a constant need to be learning new things, and I think that is something that can be seen in my work. This would lead me to the next concept to describe it, which I think would be constant change. As I am closely tied to the digital medium and it is continually updating, my work is also doing so indirectly. Although the latter can be exhausting because the times of art are different from those of technological development.
I would tell you that all the futurism created through literature or cinema has influenced a lot in how the spectator approaches these new creative processes, it looks cold, distant… somewhat robotic maybe… what’s left or gone? How do you perceive it?
Lately I’ve had to think a lot about the future and when I imagine it, it’s far away from flying cars and smart cities. For the future are things like a change of light, new presences, new absences… I think we don’t need to go to such a dystopian thing, that the future is tomorrow and little by little it is being built without us realizing it.
Years ago, when people saw digital art, they would go to reminisce about the Fluxus movement, they would see screens or see something cybernetic style, all this has changed now, what can they find now?
Maybe today a screen can be something more powerful than all that. It generates us such intense sensations as anxiety because of the constant demands of generating content for them, or on the contrary, the immense joy of being able to talk and see your parents every day through them, despite the distance. But I also think it is important that we constantly remind ourselves that they are just that, only screens.
Let’s talk about relationships, digital social relationships, and how we shape ourselves in this digital-social reality.
A somewhat delicate subject, it is difficult to be constantly reminding ourselves that we are not only what we see in these digital realities, because it depends on what contexts, these can have more weight. It’s a bit of an internal fight, although I think I value the non-digital social reality more and more.
Your work starts from the digital, you then make it corporeal and close the circle with a new digital interaction, tell me about this and the projects that illustrate it.
I think it has a lot to do with a very academic and traditional fine arts education. What has left a mark on me has been the importance of the processes in creation, and what it has to say about the work. In the case of my work, I love that things go through different “material” states and observe what happens, how their shape changes and if this also affects their meaning. In the field of digital experimentation, errors, failures and deformations are very common throughout these processes, and for me they have a lot to do with the more traditional processes: a pixelated image has a lot to do with the finishers of the pictorial representation, the deformities in a scan in a 3d scan have a great sculptural richness… And beyond the merely formal I think that the error and the failure are the ones that best portrays the human in the digital production chains, because when something does not work in them, they ceases to serve the productive.
Digital – hyper-reality – hyper-social – hyper hyper… generational?
I think these prefixes are overused, because what today is hyper…. in 20 years will be ultra… whatever, because there will be no precedents just as there are none now.
What are those projects that have been key in your advancement, in your growth, what has been those “milestone” moments that have made you see things differently?
I don’t know where it will leave me, but I think that the projects in which I have discovered and pleasantly surprised myself, have been at times when I have been invited to participate in projects that in a certain way connected with my work, but that perhaps were a little out of concepts or formalities. There was a research task on my part in which I had to figure out how. Maybe when there is a bit of a challenge in approaching a project of this type, although I never take it for granted that it will turn out well.
How is the gallery world perceived from your artistic perspective?
I think that when you start, or at least in my case it was like that, the functioning of a gallery and its day to day work with artists was totally unknown to me. When you are studying, nobody talks to you about how it really is to work in art or how the dynamics of work is. Many times you feel that there is a secrecy and that no one wants to share experiences; and this sometimes leads to bad experiences, because you don’t know how to do things. “I trusted my work and I decided to bet on it”
What have you been focusing on lately?
If I’m honest, I don’t remember anything else in the last few months other than producing/materializing works in the studio. For me life as an artist goes between stages where I’m sitting in front of the computer elaborating projects in a more creative moment. And then there are others where it’s a more mechanical production. For me this part often has quite tight periods, and I have to approach these periods as a training, as well as being structured to reach the date. Maybe it’s something personal, but as in my case I work a lot with 3D printers for example, I have to have the printing periods very measured and I leave nothing to improvisation.
This past December your work was exhibited at the Untitled Fair in Miami, with the gallery Bdr el Jundi. How did you experience the whole process?
The truth is that I still find it strange to say it, even if it is a cliché for some people, I think that crossing the pond is quite strong. I am not a person of faith, but how I will live the fair in the distance, is what I have left after these months of work preparing the exhibition of my work at the Untitled fair.
This project that I present with Badr El Jundi gallery, is a small sample of what I have been working on in recent years. A series of images that fictionalize future landscapes generated with A,I in which I question the reality of everything we experience through the screen, and what happens when we see ourselves on one side or the other of it. This has materialized in a series of sculptures that show us these fleeting “visions” of landscapes and elements of it. I talk a lot about that future that is yet to come, not so much because I believe or want to know exactly what will happen, but because I believe that this anxiety speaks of the present, and the different problems that exist in it. In fact, I use these columns a lot, as a way to materialize the images, since they are like construction elements that support the idea of a fragile future.
It’s not false modesty, but to be honest, I don’t think I ever imagined to dedicate myself to this, so participating in an international art fair on the other side of the world didn’t even cross my mind.
How has the post art Basel feedback been?
The direct reward of an art fair is that the works are sold, but I think that occasions like Untitled are also interesting in the long term and that new projects and opportunities for the future arise.
So far everything I have received has been very positive. Not only in terms of sales, which I understand is the goal of any art fair. I think that for an artist it is a great opportunity to make his work known to a new public and in the case of the Miami fairs, also massive, a very different public from the one he had had until now. Which brings me to one of the most interesting things that can happen on occasions like this, that possible projects for the future may arise.
Next Steps, projects ? Tell me where are you going?
Well, the next thing after Untitled will be a solo exhibition at the Badr El Jundi gallery in Madrid, at the end of January. I’m quite happy and very nervous too, in recent years most of the projects I’ve had have been outside and I’m very excited to have this exhibition here so that friends and acquaintances can go. And then… I would like to slow down the pace a bit after having the last few months very focused on production, and stop a bit to think and plan new projects and if possible, enjoy this part a bit.
Tell me a little more about this “rhythm” thing, it seems that if you are doing well and you decide to “stop”, or say no to something… it could be understood as “you lose your rhythm”, but the reality is that …. you have to take time to think, don’t you?
I think it is one of the biggest challenges I have when working. At the risk of sounding cliché, but scheduling time in your calendar to get creative is not easy. And if you do manage to do that, there is no guarantee that these “creative sessions” will be fruitful. In the end, you don’t just have to manage an artist career, life happens and you have to manage it as best you can.
I think you should be the one to enlighten us more! Any artists that inspire you or artists that we should know?
I always repeat myself a lot with all this but it’s the truth, I’m very inspired by my friends and colleagues in this world that I surround myself with. In the end, being able to share experiences, processes, interests, fears or joys, motivates me a lot to continue working, to not feel so alone sometimes. I hate to quote because if I pass it on to someone it seems that I don’t take it into account, but well, If that’s how it is to say good things, so be it: Mayte Gómez Molina, Pau Jiménez, Caesar Arenas, Marta Galindo, Andrea Muniain, Sandra Mar, Teresa Rofer, Abel Jaramillo, Paloma de la Cruz, Paula Valdeón, María Alcaide, Laura tabares…..
Be our oracle or dream with me. Tell me three things you want to see in the future of art.
I guess dreaming that my work has a future is already one of those three things. I would like to keep experimenting with new formats, for example, even though I’ve fooled around with augmented reality and virtual reality, maybe they are formats that still have a long way to evolve and whose use still needs to be more intuitive, and not something with limitations that take you out of the experience a little bit. So who knows what the future holds for that. And finally, to see that there is a very broad artistic panorama where there is room for everything, and that the shadow of censorship that seems to begin to lurk today is nothing more than a bad dream.