Gabriela Farnell

"Art is essentially linked to that honest search for authenticity"

 

"I believe that artists develop their vision in their work from their identity, their culture and their geographical location" she says. She also tells us how her passion for reading, cartography and museums determined her passion for plastic language throughout her life.

 

By María Laura Blaqué from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

 

     “I can't tell you that there was a moment in which I ʻdecidedʼ to dedicate myself to this, it was destiny, a way of life; what I do is what I am ”. The Argentine artist Gabriela Farnell (1967), who lives and works in Lanús, Province of Buenos Aires, confesses to us; it is substantial.

     I think… To what extent is the artist truly free? To what extent is your destiny actually engraved? Is it an almost "archaeological" adventure to surrender body and soul to art?

     I understand, in general terms, that the content of a work of art attracts more than its formal and technical qualities, to which the artist attaches (and with good reason) maximum importance. In short, works of art always exert a powerful action, and Farnell's proposal demonstrates this.

     Her art was woven in time in a self-taught way and this implies a fascinating libertarian act. "What is freedom?" A journalist asks Nina Simone. "Freedom is not being afraid," the singer responds, with a level of certainty (and simplicity) that overwhelms. It is evident in Gabriela that there has been a free and conscientious exploration, with a lot of work. I mean that, always, dedication and perseverance are more than necessary attitudes to develop as an artist.

     Farnell has found in plastic language a form of expression that has allowed her to approach her life and the world with total freedom. And freedom is fundamental in her way of understanding everything that surrounds her, it is fundamental when it comes to capturing each book she read along her journey, each visit to museums and galleries, it is fundamental when creating and communicating… is, for her, an end and a means.

     The artist, through various supports and making use of ink, graphite, acrylic, oil and watercolor, shows part of her "Farnelliano" world and with it, of the identity diversity of America, as well as of the future cultural that characterizes us. With a restless and curious soul, she tells us details of her aesthetic language and especially of the works that illustrate this interview.

How did you start to dabble in visual language? How?

     I have drawn my whole life, since I was a child, since the first time a pencil was put in my hands. Very young, to this hobby was added the frequent visit to museums, galleries and the consumption of bibliography related to art and the great masters.

Always use different supports and different techniques. Your work in this sense is quite experimental ...

     Lacking academic training, the self-taught trial-and-error method works in a very playful way, and one ends up associating the creative process with “playing games”. You learn as you go, while experimenting without shame or rules, making mistakes and frustrating many works, but discovering the reality of our possibilities. This free search, somewhat messy but constant, allows us to develop our own, authentic, definitely personal aesthetic language. I think that art is essentially linked to that honest search for authenticity.

The concept behind “Resabio de Conquista” is extremely attractive. According to your words, you describe "an imposition on the conquest both understanding it as America but also as a woman America, in its cultural and historical stereotype, superimposing itself on its past and advancing". What is it about?

      I do not conceive each work a priori, but rather they “self-determine” on the fly, from a starting point of something that attracts me; making each work requires their needs and conditioning my progress. "Resabio de Conquista" begins with a portrait and a beautiful old map of America, and suddenly the female figure has a lot of strength, it is defiant in its forward pose; she asked me for some ruins mingling with her torso, and then she emerges, powerful and defined; even if the images overlap and intermingle. And I understood that America is like that, that, after the Conquest, with everything that depending on how it was seen was bad or was good, it emerged with a mestizo wealth and superior to its original components.

 

How do you conceive of our "America"?

      It is syncretic, so magical ... so to merge the culture of all humanity, being a convergence center for people from the most disparate parts of the planet who seek to live in peace. And that same idea replicates in a woman, who from her historical place takes the good and the bad of her culture and her tradition, mixes and modifies it from herself, and emerges generating a new version, what was and what is; richer in resources, wiser and definitely more powerful. America as an allegory of a woman maker of her own destiny.

 

The "American art" has aesthetic characteristics, techniques, social functions and styles that make it particular in relation to other forms of expression. Do you think of "American art", and its characteristics, in a specific way? What will emerge from its specificities?

      I don't usually analyze my work theoretically, and perhaps due to my lack of academic training I distrust labels a bit. I do understand my work as "American art" because I am American, in fact, a fifth generation of Argentines by maternal line, and my way of understanding the world is from here, from the southernmost part of the world. I believe that artists develop their vision in their work from their identity, their culture and their geographical location. It is "Made in South America" definitely everything I do. And "Made in Lanús" too.

  

The first known map in which America is represented is the one made by the Spanish cartographer Juan de la Cosa around 1500… His research on maps, the history of America in cartography, is interesting. What led you to walk through the representation of our Continent on maps?

     I am one of those curious people who have had the wonderful fortune of growing up among books. I have in my library several Atlas that taught me to appreciate the "cartas de marear" as authentic works of art, with their exquisite excess of details and their infinite symbolic games. The ancient cartographers tried to tell the world in their representations, so that the viewer of the map imagined those distant and alien lands, exuberant and mysterious. Within my logic, by including fragments of old maps intersecting with human figures I also enable the eventual viewer to read the image in different ways, multiplying meanings, provoking him to develop a personal experience in his experience with my work.

 

Medium-term project? What are you focused on at this time of pandemic and lockdown?

     I must admit that the confinement itself has given me the perfect excuse to work continuously all day every day. But the collective anguish that the pandemic generates, the different fears and uncertainty in the face of a future that we know will not be the same as our pre-Covid present makes one survive without being clear about anything. Perhaps in the future, when I contemplate the works that I have produced in these months, I will discover some meaning that now I cannot see, an explanation of these extraordinary times. The only certain thing today is that we live days without certainties, and perhaps the work that remains as a witness will tell future generations how it was to go through it, and explain what we will be when this nightmare ends.

 

 

Gabriela Farnell / Basic

She was born in Lanus, Buenos Aires, on September 5, 1967. Self-taught artist. She has exhibited her work since 1992, receiving more than twenty awards both in Argentina and in Mexico, Uruguay and Spain. Recent exhibitions: Ovalo Galeria, Mexico - Synergic - International exhibition curated by ArtNumber 23 London UK (2019) and Anima Mundi Festival, Venice, Italy, (2019)

 

Exclusive interview for Ophelia No. 8. Production and texts by María Laura Blaqué.

Gisela Sanhueza's criticism

From Chillán, Chile / gsanhueza@revistaophelia.com

Cartographies

 

     The female surface is conjugated as an element integrated into the topographic landscape where one cannot be without the other. For Gabriela Farnell that is precisely what her works evoke, the integrative capacity of these works creates intersecting dialogues in all cardinal points. They are mental and virtual landscapes, but also physical, observable and credible. The art of mapping the sense of reality of an artistic work is one of the aspects of analysis that interests many theorists in the art world today. In this genesis of the author, at the moment of creation, when he stamps the figurative and identifiable elements on a one-dimensional surface that we call canvas, communicative vectors begin to be produced within the work. That mapping can be as powerful as the page of a novel or poem. The feminine is already its own representative map in the painting, the sinuosity of the corporeal surface is a constant georeferencing; there are valleys, furrows, hills and volcanoes: all elements recognizable on earth by the human psyche, and then transferred from there to a map, we believe that it has the luck of a vision that can anticipate digital, which is very interesting to observe. Gabriela Farnell makes sweeps over the plane of a painting like a large satellite eye, she advances capturing realities, they are photographic shots made of brush strokes. Her technique always diversifies the observation points and shows infinite possibilities in pictorial work, which are well worth admiring and treasuring. The plastic definition of a work, part precisely of that ductility and permeability of integrative combinations, Farnell has created this path with striking fire.

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