The practice of an artist can sometimes be read from what a single piece synthesizes. In Boca Negra (Black Mouth), Lucía Vidales (Mexico City, 1986) reveals some key aspects that govern her work, from the conceptual relationships that she establishes to the importance of her own performativity and her body in the production process. This conversation specifically revolves around this piece, which was part of the exhibition “Lucía Vidales. A place for herself”, at the Karen Huber Gallery, and she takes it as a starting point to delve into the pictorial and symbolic possibilities that she finds in painting, the importance of the processes in the final result and the themes that she addresses.

Regina De Con Cossío: During Boca Negra, what was your work process like?

Lucía Vidales: When I started the piece I was interested in making it light and at the same time having a monumental character. That he remembered the great Mexica stone monoliths, but light and luminous, that he was in a place between the aerial and the terrestrial and carnal. The dimensions of this painting are just the largest measurements of a painting that I can easily carry by extending my arms, and reach with my own height. This is important because there is a parallelism between the body in the painting and my body, as well as the body of the figure with mine and possibly with that of the person in front of it. Boca Negra was made during a time of the year in Monterrey when it is hot and windy, I have noticed that the processes of my paintings have a subtle relationship with the climate, in particular due to the drying processes of the materials I use and how they are build the layers. At that time of the year I work a lot on the ground, the painting constantly changes places, sometimes it is horizontal, sometimes vertical. My movements and therefore the way I paint also change. In addition to what I already mentioned, there was no predetermined plan, the painting became very defined in the process, I did it simultaneously with other paintings and each session was separated by days of not doing and just observing.

RDCC: Looking at the image of the painting, viewers are tempted to interpret what we see by giving it a form. For example, I visualize the face of a woman with long hair. It can even be about two women merging into a kiss. We know that art has no correct or incorrect interpretations, but if you were the spectator of this work, how would you approach it?

LV: During the process of painting it, I was a spectator of the painting at different times and my gaze changed even once it was finished. Thinking about it now that I don’t have it in front of me also makes me read it in another way.

There are several aspects of the Black Mouth such as the color, the long hair and the soft sensations that it evokes and that I relate to femininity. For me, long hair also has a link with the animal behavior, with the uncivilized, in the black color I also see a racialized sign, sometimes self-referential or simply as an element of drawing: lines that generate rhythm. As for the multiple or singular nature of the figure, I was interested in the fact that it could be read in one way or another, by means of that multiple and fixed capacity that painting has. I made the face considering a concept that intrigues me, escapes me and fascinates me at the same time, which is Ixiptla in Nahuatl thought. Ixiptla has to do with a type of sacred representation that can involve both people and objects, it also has to do with the skin, with appearance, with the face, with the way in which the sacred is presented or made visible. I see in the painting something that reminds me of what I understand Ixiptla to be and also a kind of shadow, referring to a negative space form of the figure in a traditional sense. I think one of the things that concerns me a lot is -what a figure implies-, in this case, this specific type of figure. I also think that the face can be a kind of mask, a multiplicity of related elements that come into contact or flow. I love the interpretation of two women kissing.

RDCC: Like never before in your career, your most recent exhibition links concepts such as the body and women with art. I am tempted to say that in these last pieces you have left a very powerful autobiographical trace. Am I wrong? What do you think about this connection between the work and the viewer at the time of artistic production?

LV: For this exhibition I started from an imaginative thought around Malinche, as a kind of underground river that fed the work. That imaginative thought  starts from how I specifically live my body, which is a body that is perceived and enunciated mainly as feminine, but it also has to do with other bodies that are not my own, such as that of a snake, a rock or Tlazolteotl. In some way, I identify myself with the image of Malinche that I have constructed, but it is an imaginary, mutating and problematic identification, it is not fixed, nor does it have any type of objectivity, it is between fiction, information from sources and personal experience. Painting for me has a lot to do with the body, mine and that of the painting, my body crossed by its experiences and its desires, that’s where I paint from. At the same time, it is important to me that the work does not seek at any time to establish limits of what my body is, of what is an autobiographical reference, nor of what is feminine in a body, or in the body of a woman. In the work of the exhibition there are specific problems about the figure and about certain aspects that we can relate to the feminine in a figure. Although these figures can be related to myself or to other people, they do not establish a fixed identity nor do they seek a consistent and clear representation, sometimes I even seek to dissolve them in abstraction so they disappear as figures. I am interested in the fact that the gaze and imagination of each person who looks at the work can establish in a flexible way how and how far these figures can reach their identities and the meaning of their forms.

“The spectator” is a generality that I do not know, but I do know my body in some way and I know that each spectator also has a body and an experience that, although unknown to me, can be linked to mine. It turns out that I am the first viewer of my work and I think that if a painting manages to interest me, there is a chance that someone else will also be interested. I trust a lot in those invisible links, but I also  know that there is never a certainty around them. When painting there are days of trust and moments of loneliness or pessimism, the most desirable thing for me is to be in that tension without letting them be total.

RDCC: How do you decide the titles of your pieces? I see Bocanegra and I feel that I cannot separate it from her name, that somehow the name is part of the inner image. Do you have a specific process for this, what was it for Bocanegra?

LV: Each piece has a different relationship with its title, in this case the title came at the end, but it was inspired by another painting which is like his sister and which I painted before this one. That sister painting is called Fat ass, long hair and was part of another exhibition called Manoteta. I thought it was important that the link between those paintings was also in the title, all those titles are descriptive and built by double elements. In Boca Negra I like how the black in the word transforms the mouth, there is the color and the body, and when they come together it turns out that they refer to the history of Mexico, in some way they make both the color and the body more specific. Most of my titles are also quotes to elements that without the title it would be difficult to relate to the painting.

RDCC: In the description of the exhibition where Bocanegra is located, it is mentioned that this work takes Malinche as its starting point, a woman who, between myth and reality, has been appropriated by our society in different ways. What do you think is the reason for this trend in contemporary art to review the history of our environment to give it new interpretations?

LV: Regarding contemporary art, I don’t dare to generalize. For me, in painting, thinking only about a present time unrelated to the exterior is insufficient, I need the imagination and the gaze of a time that is complex and partly unknown. The past is part of what is unknown and it interests me when it is significant for the present and the future, not as an academic fact. I love how we artists make incorrect readings about disciplines, but that does not mean that they are not important for life. In the case of my work, it is something that has happened several times, a lot of it has been nourished by historical elements, although always from a personal point of view that does not use methodologies either from history  or anthropology. It is rather a point of view that is committed to itself and to painting, but can also be seen as capricious, contradictory and irresponsible. The tradition of painting itself and its history are fundamental for me, the case of the colonial history of Mexico is problematic and full of tensions, pending issues, contradictions, terrible and also fascinating things, that is what interests me the most, because these tensions are alive and have the power to take us to other places. I try not to make interpretations of history, in reality what I know is always very little and it is also true that as an individual I do not know what to do with that history and nor could I say what should be done. So more than reinterpreting history, what I try to do is give a different form to elements that come from afar, put all that in relation, the interpretations seem to me to be more in the hands of those who see the painting.

RDCC: Bocanegra has the name of another important woman in the history of Mexico… María Gertudris Bocanegra, is there any relationship?

LV: Sure, the first image I think of with that title is literal and very simple: the image of a black mouth. But I also believe that there is a relationship between the mouth understood as a dark hole and silence: Gertrudis’s silence that led her not to betray the independence movement and cost her her life. I find it interesting to think of Malintzin and Bocanegra related by the language, the mouth, and that both have been harshly judged and both somehow changed the history of this territory. The place that many women in history have occupied passing messages, translating, giving news, or keeping silent is fascinating. At the same time, I think that the specific reference to Gertrudis is not necessary, perhaps someone who does not know this story could wonder about a black mouth, who and why can one have a black mouth, what makes this possible. The question about how it is possible to have a black mouth seems to me to have to do with painting. In this way other figures can also appear, Tlazolteotl was seen by the Spanish colonizers as the goddess of filth and lust with a moral charge defined by the Christianity of the 16th century and the representation of her appears with a black mouth. But from the Huastec and Nahua perspective, Tlazolteotl has to do with fertility and with other principles related to black color that have to do with the transformation of materials and life and death. Moreover, black is something I’ve thought about a lot lately, mainly as an intermediate place between painting and drawing, in academic painting it is said that it should not be painted with direct black because it creates a gap or a cut and those elements are in tension in this painting.