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Kukuli Velarde | Episode 526
Kukuli Velarde is a Peruvian artist based in the United States since 1987. She has received awards and grants such as the Guggenheim Fellowship (New York- 2015), the Pollock Krasner Foundation grant (New York- 2012), the United States Artists-Knight fellowship (California- 2009), the Pew fellowship in Visual Arts (Pennsylvania- 2003), the Anonymous is a Woman award (New York- 2000), the Joan Mitchell Foundation grant (New York- 1997), among others. In 2013 her project CORPUS got the Grand Prize at the Gyeonggi Ceramics Biennial in South Korea. Her exhibition credits include: KUKULI VELARDE: THE COMPLICIT EYE at Taller (Philadelphia, 2018-19); KUKULI VELARDE at AMOCA, (Los Angeles 2017); PLUNDER ME, BABY at the Yenggi Museum of Ceramics’ Biennial of Taipei (Taiwan 2014); CORPUS (work in Progress) at the Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennial (South Korea 2013); also KUKULI VELARDE: PLUNDER ME, BABY at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in (Kansas city, KS in 2013), PATRIMONIO at Barry Friedman Gallery (NY, 2010) and PLUNDER ME, BABY at Garth Clark Gallery (NY, 2007). She is married to Doug Herren, sculptor and they have a small daughter named Vida. They live in Philadelphia, PA. USA.
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Are you merely trying to modernize pre-Columbian work or are you trying to communicate a modern story with it as the jumping off point?
I don’t think I am trying neither. I am not the kind of artist who sits in front of the lump of clay and says, I want to get a piece inspiring in pre-Columbian work and I am going to do this that or the other. This combination of elements or ideas don’t come from a rationalization of my possibilities to make work. I have to. I remember going to museums and wondering when will be that these pieces will come alive? What if they become alive and all of sudden they are not in the murals that they are supposed to be, they are not being looked by people imagining that they can see, and they are completely out of context and they are asking themselves, What is this? Who is this people? Why am I here? Who brought me here? This is not where I was supposed to be. I imagined that, and I went to the museum in Denver and I saw a postcard of a Maya piece and that Maya piece haunted me. I imagined making this piece but with my face and the title came to me, Plunder Me, Baby. Which is an attitude which is saying, You did everything to me, and I know what you have done. I am not stupid. I know what is going on. And I like that attitude. Even if you are inflicted with pain, if you own it, it gives you a power. So that is the way I work.
So does that mean you are completely discovering what your work is as you make it as opposed to planning it out before you go?
Yeah, I think in a way I am, I can rationalize it afterwards, but in the moment that I am beginning it is an impulse. It is a visceral impulse, you know.
You have shared the various ways your work has been recognized. Do you see it then as a springboard or an amplifier to be able to communicate a message after you have made the work?
I see them as a document of this time. I see that they will talk about what they will talk whether or not I am near by. Whether I exist or I don’t that document is there and it is explicit. I am not a subtle artist. I don’t believe in subtlety. I think no matter how long we talk we will never understand each other wholly and therefore to try and be subtle is like a waste of time. So I think that work has something to say and it will and if doesn’t now it will some some time. They are there already, they exist. The work is done in that sense. To me the process is the most important thing. The opportunity to say exactly what I want is one layer and the enjoyment of working with clay is another layer. I have a theory that is called the theory of inefficiency. Do you want to hear it?
Explain to me what the theory of inefficiency is.
Okay, I always explain things with stories and I will tell you a story. My husband, he has a Master’s degree, so he know a lot more things related to clay than I do. And one day I was making this neck of one of my pieces. For whatever reason, I was making this long neck. I was shaving and shaving and shaving clay because it was a little too thick for me. As I was shaving and shaving and shaving, I was minding my own business, listening to my music and shaving and shaving and shaving, until the moment I realized that I was shaving it too much and the walls were beginning to be a little too thin. So my husband was coming by and I tell him, Look, I need the neck to be slimmer, what do I do? Hoping he said what I was going to do but he never does that. He says, Why don’t you make another cylinder and put it instead? And I am like, What do you mean? He says, Just make another cylinder the width that you want and cut that one and put it instead. And I said, What? And all the fun I am having shaving, you want me to throw it away? Never! So I took a slab of clay and I put it inside the cylinder and he is looking at me and says, You can’t have bubbles. And I say, No, no, no, we are not going to have bubbles. We are going to fire very slow. And I put my slab very well inside and I kept shaving three more days. And Paul I have to tell you, the fun I had was worth it.
So is that the driving factor for you? Is it fun?
It shouldn’t be the driving factor. Isn’t that great that that can be the driving factor?
Yes.
Shouldn’t that be the driving factor? I mean, let’s face it, I don’t sell my pieces frequently so what do I care if I have one piece in one week or in one month? It is equally going to stay with me for a long time. I don’t look at my pieces with a money sign. I look at my pieces as what is left after having these days of amazing bliss in which being efficient would just mean to cut down in those moments. And why would I do that?
Do you make with an idea towards any kind of audience? Do you ever think of shows, galleries, museums or are you strictly thinking of your work all by itself and not the bridge as to where it may end up?
No, I do think about the audience but they are not the ones who drive me to do the piece. I make the piece because I want to make it. I make the piece for me for myself. But they also have a message to say, and I hope that that message goes through and I like the idea of bringing to the table a different way of looking at certain things. I think we are used to thinking that western aesthetics are universal. And western aesthetics are not universal and we rationalize that it is not universal, but we still treat it as if it were. So if I am trying something it is for you to see that there are other understandings of beauty and of art in general.
My last question for you is: Is your work open to interpretation or do you want them to catch a specific meaning?
I think it is very hard to control what people are going to see in the work. I don’t expect the work as a whole is going to be understood fully but I like to believe that the work makes you wonder. I think that is a very good first step, to make you wonder.
Contact
Instagram: @kukuli.velarde