We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Oladia Menchaca a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My creative journey has come a long way and continues to be a work in progress. As a visual artist, I was only drawing portraits with the goal to get every detail so it can look exactly like whoever I’m drawing. Once I went to college however, I realized that I needed to create something with more purpose: who am I doing this for? what do I have to do to make my art more meaningful? So I ended up creating my senior thesis called “MIXED: Who am I and where do I belong” where I was discovering my cultural identity as an Afro-Latina. It was through this process where I was getting a sense of who I am culturally and motivated me to be more involved in the Afro-Latinx community. In addition, I had an art piece that discussed my mental health at the time I created it with a self portrait with three faces, each displaying a different emotion. The process is similar as a dancer. Over the years, I began to set intentions with my movements by using my body more. I found that the physicality of exaggerating movements or just using every single muscle to create a beautiful shape and line is liberating. Although I have all of these aspirations to dance for big music artists, perform on the big stage, dance for nfl/nba teams, and choreograph, I just want that liberating feeling all the time. Essentially, the need to know and express myself mentally, spiritually, sexually, and culturally drives me to create and have the strength to finally release my heavy chains.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
I think the most rewarding aspect of being both an artist and a dancer is seeing the body of work you created and you got to know yourself even more. After I graduated college, I came to the conclusion that creating was going to be the way that I would truly find myself because a part of me didn’t know who I was yet (still don’t). What I love about showing what I create to other people is that with any art form whether it’s through a mixed media art piece or a choreography for a show, you can have three people, for example, look at a piece of work and give you three completely different persepectives on what the art meant to them, how it made them feel, or if they even like it or not; but there is never a wrong answer because at the end of the day, you’re creating for YOU, not for anyone else. It’s not an artist’s job to make people understand the art, it’s the job of the artist to simply create and express themselves.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://oladia1999.wixsite.com/my-site-1
- Instagram: @artisticallyla
Image Credits
Photos 2 (baby blue bandana) ,3 (3 models, me wearing the lime green hat) ,4 (attitude jump picture, purple), and 8 (white button down, blue shorts), main photo (black prince shirt, blue bandana) Taken by: Uriah Roman