We interviewed Camila as part of our proposal to offer insight into how practicing artists were coping with these unprecedented times. She has talked about ways in which she had to manoeuvre and reposition to align with restrictions.

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1- Who are you? 

My name is Camila, I am a Chilean artist. Currently, I am living in Lisbon because of a scholarship I got from Gulbenkian Foundation for an Artist in Residency Programme at Carpintarias do São Lazaro, a cultural centre here in Lisbon.

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2- What is your artistic practice? 

My work, mainly three-dimensional, aims to make the socio-political context visible, exploring the relationship between power and visibility. 

I make installations and sculptures that deal with the dichotomy of visibility. I understand the phenomenon of becoming visible as a conjunction of time and space, but mostly as a very fragile moment. I use different kinds of materials such as balloons, smoke, plants, glass, clear resins and diverse sources of light, because of its fragility. 

Through my practice, I explore how art makes visible those elements, which the dynamics of power moves out of our range of view. I understand my works as gestures that reveal the space and its particular conditions. From this emerges the interdependence between them and the space that surrounds them. I address interactions between space and human relationships (micropolitics). My practice works with the idea of context as a symbolic space, where projects are not simply placed but from where they also emerge.

My current research is developed in the intersection between art and human geography. Extrapolating my previous research around periphery, marginality and invisibility into global processes linked to migration, power centres and costs of progress in less developed countries. 

I am interested in the frontier as a concept and borders as materiality. I am currently developing a visual and conceptual research on the ideas of homeland, nation, and territory. I assess these throughout the deconstruction and resignification of existing national symbols (i.e. “Geofencing”, “Territory”, “Domain” and “All the countries that I know, or a story of celebration and decay”).

Outside of the traditional exhibition space, I am interested in creating projects that directly focus on local communities and public participation, which results in converting different geographical spaces into a neighbourhood, territories into communities. Staying connected with the ideas of homeland, nation, territory, and migration, I forge communal art spaces and shared experiences that help to build the cultural identity of the community and sustain it (i.e. “El lugar de la visibilidad” and “Brave into new times”).

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-What drove you to work as you are now? 

Migration and the idea of belonging are not just important topics in my practice, but also has shaped my biography and way of understanding the world and the space that I inhabit. I come from a family of migrants, who arrived in Chile as refugees of the Spanish civil war in mid 20th century and I have been a migrant for almost my whole adult life, living in different countries such as Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Austria, for the past two years, in the UK, and now in Lisbon.  

I have been involved in projects related to belonging, migration and geopolitics because they are topics interesting for me (i.e.”El lugar de la visibilidad”, “Existencia en el borde” and “brave into new times”). But when I arrived in the UK -also around the time when the world turned to the far-right wing in terms of politics- nationalism has been more and more prominent. With that, I started to be more attentive to symbols of Nationalism, like flags and borders, so every time that I walk by the street anywhere, I recognize (or I am looking for) some trace of it. In the current political context seems urgent for me to, through my practice, create or attempt to create space of belonging, by embracing the value of multiculturalism and the human dimension of the context.

 

– How has your work been impacted by lockdown restrictions and the pandemic?

In practical terms, in the beginning, the lockdown was tough because I had just started a residency programme in Berlin in March this year, and I had to postpone this Residency and all the plans that I had for it, and come back to Chile as I, (and mainly anyone), didn’t know how the lockdown would evolve. 

While in Chile, I received a grant from the Chilean Ministry of Culture to develop my practice and my research and that was amazing in order to get time to focus and re-think my production. I was at the middle of that project when I received this scholarship to move to Lisbon, and that was surprising also because we were on a restrict lockdown in Chile and I wasn’t sure I could fly as the borders were closed. 

Pandemic and its restrictions, I think, have created a new scenario for artists, a hard one, because we have had to find new ways to create and show work and find opportunities. In my case, it is harsh because my work it is mainly three-dimensional and the physical experience of the work it is important for me, also because the context in which I create my works it is central for my practice. And we were, and still are, in a scenario in which our context is reduced, to our houses and studios, with minimum stimulus from outside. 

But, on the other hand, in terms of research, due to lockdowns and the pandemic, the world in 2020 has changed, perhaps momentarily or more surely, permanently. Our interpersonal relationships have changed, borders have changed in scale, from nations to homes, and with all this, our sense of community and belonging. Quickly with the advance of the pandemic, the borders, for some invisible, appeared predominantly to be closed, each being relegated to their territory of birth, confined to our personal space, restricted to relating to those close to us, or even with more distance than before.

This scenario also makes the inequalities in which we live, the precariousness of certain human groups and, above all, the segregation of our society, appear, with even greater prominence than before, which place us binarily on one side or the other of a dialectical axis; between the ones who born in a territory and the ones who migrated; migrants from the global south and migrants from the global north; rich and poor; and many other denominations regarding non/relevance, non/access. And the above, at least in my case, has created a feeling of urgency and a bigger commitment to my practice.

 

3- What are you currently working on? 

I am currently working on the project for my residency in Lisbon, in a very mixed neighbourhood named “Mouraria”. The project is still on process, but it is a visual research that has at its core the question of how to create a space of belonging through art practice? The project attempts within the interaction and collaboration of the community around Carpintarias de São Lázaro, address ideas of belonging, nationalism and politics of identity and exclusion throughout the development of artworks.

This project emerges from an interdisciplinary attempt to intersect research in the field of Human Geography and politics with Fine Art practice, in order to understand and explore how dynamics of exclusion can be negotiated through art.

I am developing a research project to explore how migration, through shaping biographies and stories, model the construction of our collective identity, for the ones who migrate but also for the ones who receive us as migrants. I am tracking the traces of identity that different individuals leave while inhabiting. How traditional lifestyles, routines, imaginary, customizes and permeates the physical space. How the space is transformed throughout migration by embracing the foreign. Migration became a milestone in our own history, but also shape how our cities look like and are built, by the superposition of interactions, by the touch and the encounter of different cultures.

I am also participating on an exhibition about migration, fleeing and prejudice, called “Spuren und masken der flucht” at Landesgalerie Niederösterreich in Krems, Austria.

 

4- Where can we find you? 

You can find further information of my work and projects on my website: www.camilalobos.com or my Instagram account: camilalobosd.