We recently connected with Sheila Fraga and have shared our conversation below.

Sheila, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

For me, the most significant project I have worked on has been the Series on identity and eroticism from my personal life entitled “Feeling Pipelines.” From the female intervention as part of public spaces using water pipes as an icon of belonging to the City of Miami. It has been a challenge to establish myself as a contemporary artist, imposing myself in the face of my own personal conflicts. I have been working on the erotic context in this series for the last 7 years as a rebellious response sustained in that idea of ​​making women freer and projecting herself naked without any taboo and even more so in intimate scenes where sexuality exchanges so much with her fiancé and the metallic elements of pipes in ironic-provocative ways..

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I have always had an inclination for art from a very early age. When I finished high school I decided to study Fine Arts at the San Alejandro Fine Arts Academy in Havana, Cuba, where I originally come from. After an arduous and constant formation of private classes with the Art Instructor-artist Duque and the Manero Workshop with the director and professor Alberto Figueroa, I was able to enter said academy and in 1999 I graduated with the specialty of painting. With academic training and mastery of different techniques such as watercolor, cutouts, mixed media, oil, acrylic, ink, graphite, collage, art installations, performance, charcoal, pastel and oil, I managed to create a solid proposal, where Identity and Spirituality with the genre of the self-portrait marked my beginnings on the island. In 2004 I was invited with two Cuban artist friends to an artistic residence to exhibit in a collective exhibition entitled “Identifications” at the University of Aveiro and the Portuguese gallery owner and Contemporary Art Collector José Sacramento. In that year I arrived in the United States as a Cuban exile and since then I have lived and worked in Miami.

The big challenge started here, where I had to restart my life practically from zero. With a new reality of facing not only the language but to stop being an artist to work and start a family as an immigrant. During all these years I have continued painting and drawing in search of my evolution as a woman-artist-mother. Where the genre of the nude was my inspiration to continue highlighting my emotions and feelings from the female figure. In 2015, following a collective exhibition at the Macaya gallery in Wynwood, Miami, I started a series called “Decontextualization” where I denied all the paintings from previous years with the use of collage.
Then “Feeling Pipelines” arises together with the project of the Latin American Art Pavilion with the gallery owner María Nápoles, her curator Anaibis Yero and with the artistic advice of my friend Adal the filmmaker and later the friendship and artist collaborator the American poet Steve, the series of drawings, paintings and collages on women as a public intervention with urban elements, the water pipes of the city of Miami. It was the beginning of my new artistic projection with an erotic-social-urban content. In 2020, with the initiative of Cuban art collector Leonardo Rodríguez to resume ceramics as an artistic expression in South Florida, I was part of said collection with the incursion of ceramic technique through the collective exhibition “Fine Arts on the Plates ”. Being the leader of the erotic theme within the group, my vision took another conceptual and formal turn where the figure of the man and the woman become more present in these installations with more sexual and provocative postures. In 2021 I was able to collaborate with illustrations for the Paterson History Coloring Book at the Paterson Museum, as well as literary and artistic books and magazines. My works are part of both national and international collections, which respond to not only personal but also social problems.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I believe from my humble opinion as an artist what shocks us most in today’s society is that we cannot live with dignity from what we do, we have to take it as something secondary to survive in this consumer society and erase the myth that art is not it lives . That they find new art market platforms like Artsy for unrepresented artists for free, where you can see a reasonable systematic income, galleries, museums and institutions available to exhibit at no cost and finally be able to do our job, which is to exhibit our works and market them to those interested, such as gallery owners, art collectors, investors and passionate buyers. Create more initiatives for the city that we can offer our creativity and collaborate with the local community. Create auctions to promote and sell the works of local and emerging artists and help us support our art supplies and cover all our daily needs. Create a space in each community available to all local artists to exhibit and sell their works, helping them in the promotion and dissemination of each event. Create a new system of work for those local and emerging artists, I am not referring to digital art, but to the traditional art of painting and drawing with all its handmade techniques and give it a reasonable price. Give those non-digital artists the opportunity to collaborate in city projects, small businesses, branches of science, health, education, etc., offering them their creativity for the development of both parties. That there are more sponsors, gallery owners, art collectors, investors and art buyers. That our work is more valued as something important in the culture of a community, because we work with our most sincere emotions and feelings, although sometimes they are misunderstood. I think that the role of the artist must be taken very seriously, because sometimes people are not reached with words but with visual images and that must be valued with a real price. To break the myth that art is not lived.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me, the most rewarding thing about being an artist or creative is being able to have your own tools, both your technical skills and your imaginative system to freely express your thoughts, emotions, feelings from your own vision and to be able to collaborate with other artists, connect with other people that are related to your inner world. And that there is always a way out of problems just by thinking that the solution is in your hands. It is a blessing to have the opportunity to be free, to be happy.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: sheilafraga_cubanartist
• Facebook: facebook.com/SHEILAFRAGAARTTASTE
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/sheila-fraga-a6a5455a

Image Credits
Sheila Fraga