Today we’d like to introduce you to Cesar Kastro

Hi Cesar, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?

Born in Bogota, I spent my childhood learning in the Andean meadows 2,625 meters closer to the stars. Surrounded by an extensive community and with a close relation to nature. In the mid 90’s I moved to the Miami to endure the strong humidity and merciless sun of a neighbor to the Caribbean. I diligently learned to adapt to a new group of people and was quickly exposed to its culture. I straddled between these two worlds for more than two decades.

Eventually I settled in NYC, where I embarked on a journey to pursue higher education in the social sciences. I eventually labored in the creative field traveling with a dance company as a scenic supervisor, and as a fabricator in an artist studio. I was able to travel and work with extremely talented creatives from around the world and to collaborate with them in their own territory. I found myself submerged in the vast creative world of NYC, hence Nadia Tahoun and I decided to start a collective.

Flower Shop Collective began as response to the vast a mount of creative talent that commutes to this city throughout time leaving small footprints of their passage and excessive labor to their capitalist sovereigns. We decided to use our expertise to help those artist of NYC whom are representative of the diasporas from the global majority, to navigate the art world beyond what higher education lacks to provide for them.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?

New York City can be a hard city to live in. It is expensive and relentless. That was the nucleus from where the idea of Flower Shop Collective bloomed from. How can we make the experience of being an artist of color supportive and beautiful? How can we show up for each other consistently? How can we nurture our practices alongside each other? I am also keenly aware that many artists we have worked with throughout our time as a collective, have immigration trauma. I suffer from immigration trauma myself and my practice has been such a catalyst to recognize it and see it as part who I am today.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?

Throughout this time, I have consistently exercised my creative mind to invent and ponder what exists both within and beyond our time and place. In 2020, I created the series “Noicanicula,” where I accessed the MET’s database to view Pre-Columbian objects that were pillaged from their home territories and are now held by foreign institutions far from their lands. I explored the possibility of giving these objects meaning beyond the past they occupy, empowering them to carry on tradition and preserve communities and their cultures. Noicanicula is blood memory communicated through the hallucination that is creativity.

I seek to remember and to forge solid techniques of remembrance. Through the process of “Blood Memory,” I strive to create a new future and decolonize remembrance by forging new worlds, activated by ongoing archaeological discoveries of the MUISCA peoples and melded with my own creative “hallucinations” brought forward by day-to-day experiences.

Using a wooden panel, I play with mythological tales, focusing on figures that depict anthropomorphic beings with long arms embellished with a crimson palette and golden accents. These figures are contrasted against a dark, vast, and unknown background, adorned with a minimalist depiction of the Andes in various gray tones. The use of a crimson palette is intended to disturb the viewer and challenge the general understanding of such color in figurative representations of people. It is striking and demands attention, compelling the viewer to either engage or look away in immediate disapproval. Through my creative memory, I choose to view the characters in a crimson palette to further influence the release of my blood memory. The golden accents embellish the figures with accolades of the culture that grants us a divine aura, while simultaneously exposing the weight of a foreign culture, making it harder for the characters to navigate the dark, unknown backgrounds. Throughout my paintings, the audience can find a solitary flower that pays homage to “the rose that grew from concrete” by Tupac Shakur, becoming my signature.

I have deeply delved into this world, surfacing new aspects of it little by little over the years, giving it more strength and depth as I gain a greater understanding of who I am and the relationship of my ancestors to me through decolonial remembrance. I look forward to further deepening this relationship with my ancestors and honoring them through community work in my day-to-day life, which goes beyond the creative.

In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?

There is much that needs to be dismantled and rebuilt. The community needs to be put in the forefront and care amongst us has to be of upmost important to become better at prioritizing our way of life for the sake of all living things that inhabit our home.
I am currently very inspired by the Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito’s Degrowth Manifesto. Saito argues that all industries need to slow down and reconfigure how we are operating for the sake of humanity and our planet.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ckastro.com
• Instagram: @kastrocr
• Youtube: @cesarkr
• Other: https://www.artsy.net/artist/cesar-kastro

Image Credits

Personal Photo: Keith Haley Robitaille

Additional Photos: Cesar Kastro