We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Carolina Garcia a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Carolina, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
Exaggerations of History is one of my latest projects and is a testament to my main focus in art, which is inclusion, sharing what I propose is needed to achieve an inclusive world and also dealing with different subject lines where inclusion is lacking. In this case, I wanted to invite the viewer to learn more about women from the past including them in today’s conversation. The project highlights the resilience and brilliance of women artists through the ages. For that I created 101 miniature portraits of female artists from the 12th to the 20th centuries, all selected for the relevant role they played during their time, yet we hardly have heard of them today. I included an Augmented Reality experience for each one of them, giving the visitor a highlight reel of their life and work. I embarked myself in extended research that lasted over a year to be able to share their life in a video format and to make it more impactful each one of them last on average 30 seconds, making it accessible and acting as a key for them to give time and learn more about them. I wanted to rewrite the narrative that is in most people’s mind about only being great females artists in recent years, which is far from what really happened. With Exaggerations I wanted to honor the unsung heroines of art.
This project was fueled by passion and informed with extensive research, which made it very difficult to have a 30 second story, but I wanted to learn and share things that were incredible powerful, surprising even for most, as they took decisions and lived life in a way that is astonishingly similar with today’s life in times where anyone would thing it wasn’t possible. Their confidence and perseverance defied conventions in the most incredible places.
I want this work to also work as a reminder to younger generations that greatness knows no bounds. Through their commitment and passion, these women defied the odds, leaving an indelible mark on history. Their stories serve as beacons of hope, guiding us towards a future where barriers are shattered, and dreams are realized. If they could, then we can.
Most people that attended the previous exhibit expressed the desire to delve deeper into their legacies. A new opportunity to see Exaggerations of History comes to MoCA-Americas in Miami. From March 22nd – May 3rd, 2024, where I will be showcasing 30 of them. Opening reception is on March 22nd. Hope to see everyone there 😊
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
In the beginning it was me, and art was my language. Time passed and by the time I graduated HS I realized I couldn’t dedicate my life to art, and I went with a different profession, which I embraced and loved for many years. Then, I formed a family and had my son. And things pivoted. I left the profession for which I formally studied. I wanted desperately to reach him, to communicate with him and digging deep into myself I wondered if Art was also his language. I use art to understand myself and what surrounds me, I use it to deal with things and even to take notes… even in college, I would sit up front and doodle, draw or color… that was my way of learning. Shapes and colors… and to my surprise, it was absolutely his language too. He was nonverbal and I felt he was disengaging… he was becoming very aware of the division this lack of communication was creating. He lit up with art and colors. When I started presenting him my ideas in drawing format, he started understanding me and in return I gave him colors and tools to create, and I understood everything about what he did with them. It was our language, and we were communicating. It was bliss! That experience opened a door that I never closed afterwards. I started sharing the journey and organically it became my new profession. And naturally it also was a journey into inclusion. I was aware that as a society we were far from embracing diversity, but I didn’t suspect the extension of it and worse, all the many levels it had.
I am the type of person that scrutinizes even the most hidden depths of my being, not in a negative way, but as a way to live a full life experience, I meditate, and I find peace and silence. I need to understand what I need for happiness in a transcendental way, and it was the same for this. I realized that what we had forgotten the most is the self. In an attempt to be more inclusive, I guess, we view thinking about the self as only a selfish matter, but to me is through the realization of who we are, including our weaknesses and limitations, that we can achieve a more inclusive society. When you accept who you are, you accept others. Many reasons, the projection of your shortcomings vanishes, you learn to value yourself as a whole and build a healthy self-esteem; you lose fears of showing who you are and lose the fear of people that are different. At the core you realize that we all are and that we can come together anyway. This is my belief. My drive.
Taking that into account is that I say I work on the subject matter of Inclusion, rather than a technique or a material. I need to showcase the different aspects of my journey into understanding what inclusion entails. I want the invitation to be open, I want others to explore who they are, to lose the fear. It is transformative. And my expressions about this are very dissimilar from one another and depend only on what I am exploring as I use the techniques and materials that better adjust to share those ideas and to generate the questions. For that my installations are also a very important part of my work. Through them I create spaces to wonder, to meditate, to interact with yourself and with the world around you.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Long ago, a friend of mine asked me if I thought I would ever be happy again, all of it in the mist of the worst part of my son’s diagnosis, where there wasn’t actually one, and doctors were sharing mostly worst-case scenarios that I never thought any parent had to endure. And I clearly remember saying, “Not happy. Content. Perhaps.” I realized then that I had stopped giving myself time to think. Up until that precise moment, I had been on autopilot, managing life, work, doctors, tests, hospitals, therapy, etc. The time to think about relevant matters such as happiness had been relegated to the backburner, and I had to do something about it. Because it was crucial, not only for myself but for my entire family, that we discover together a way to a happy life. My son deserved to live in a happy household.
It was during this time that I decided to become a full-time mom and stay at home with him. The transition was hard; not only did I realize all the tools I was lacking to be successful in this new enterprise, but resources also diminished. We accommodated. Life is more than money, but money does help, and we have to recognize that. It was not an easy decision, and my husband and I took all our individual strengths into consideration when deciding who was going to jump into this. And I won, LOL. Now I can say I won more than I can say. It has been a rewarding journey. But the beginning was rocky. Being confronted with situations that are difficult to manage is one thing, but this, at times, felt like an impossible task. And in the back was all the self-doubt: was this the right decision? Maybe I should have continued paying the professionals. This feels so weird to write right now, as I feel so proud of me and my husband for what we did. It was hard on both of us.
A decade and a half later, and today I say I have never been happier.
An artist needs to live to express through their art. and I could have glided through things, but I took the time to understand everything deeply, to understand myself in relation to it all, and it reflects in what I do. I couldn’t be any other, and the gift I got from all this experience was being able to become a professional artist. It has been absolutely rewarding to share my work and the meaning behind it. From pain have come beautiful things. The happiest and most colorful of my works is Hi and Hello World. I have been told it truly sparks joy, and it came from a place when I thought my soul had shattered completely. And I have had people in tears connecting with themselves and with it… and I have been told it looks made for children… until adults experience it for themselves and realize it is, but for the children we continue to have inside of all of us. The guiding spirit comes from a place that embraces others the same way we did when we were children. The story of how it came to be is long, and it was my process for realizing that happiness didn’t come from a situation; it was deeply rooted in my soul, and it was a conscious decision. One that I needed to take in shorter spans when things became more difficult.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The freedom. I can share what I think and who I am with the viewer. Sometimes in a very direct way and others indirectly, but always true. This is remarkable for many reasons, but most importantly because it allows me to create spaces for important conversations in times where hard conversations are incredibly difficult to have. I have also given myself extra freedom as an artist in the sense that I don’t believe that an artist needs to focus on only one type of art. Humans are complex creatures that have multiple interests, and I am one. I honor that.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.apiaart.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/apia_art
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/ApiaArt
Image Credits
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