We recently connected with Edwin García Maldonado and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Edwin, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
I became acquainted with printmaking as a craft and as an artistic practice when I started college in Venezuela. There I had several subjects related to this field and began to explore techniques, processes, materials, the conceptualization and execution of a series of prints, among other things.
When I was in my intership I attended a very important professional printmaking workshop in my country, where I was fortunate to meet artists of great trajectory and collaborate for them under the guidance of the artistic coordinator of the workshop, who was my tutor. This experience strengthened and expanded my knowledge and love for printmaking as a profession.
This learning process not only meant developing a good level of technical skills, but also understanding that the concept and discourse within the artwork are fundamental, as well as having to cultivate patience and discipline.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I was trained in visual arts at the Universidad de Los Andes, in Venezuela, but I specialized in printmaking after my internships. From that moment on I began to develop my graphic work as my main professional practice. A few years later I became a professor of printmaking at the same university and there I began to do research in and from printmaking within the faculty workshops.
When I migrated to Buenos Aires, I was able to buy my own etching press and have my own printmaking studio at home; since then I have been making small and medium format prints. I work with different techniques such as mokulito, photolithography, intaglio engraving and collagraphy. My prints are printed on cotton paper and hand signed, which I send to biennials and printmaking competitions, some others are sold and I keep a few as part of my portfolio.
Traditional engraving allows the printing of multiple copies. I work in series and print few copies of each image to offer a limited and more exclusive edition of prints. I like to pursue both deep meaning and technical quality in my prints, since that is part of the research and creative work that a professional printmaker does. My main research topics are becoming and uprooting, which I express through the metaphorization of a landscape that is always unfinished, fragmented, isolated or furrowed by geometrization.
This type of images allow me to reconstruct landscapes of places where I have lived or where I have passed through as a migrant, although altered by the passage of time, memory, nostalgia or rupture. Through these topics I explore the reconfiguration of places as fictitious scenarios in which identity, territory and rootedness are altered.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
As a migrant, I consider it a great challenge to be able to settle again in a place other than your country of origin. In my case, the process of adaptation and improvement in another country has taken me several years. One must sort out the basics such as legal status, food and lodging before being able to rebuild one’s professional, academic and/or emotional life, that´s not always easy.
Fortunately, once the legal situation is resolved and the economic situation begins to improve, one can rebuild one’s life little by little. In Argentina I had the opportunity to pursue my graduate studies and now I am pursuing a doctorate in the arts and have my own printmaking studio at home.
Living as an artist and migrant is generally difficult but it is worth it to seek a better life. I work in various professional activities, in and out of the arts. I also have the support of my partner, who has been my companion and who has helped me to rebuild my place in the world.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
My main objectives are, on the one hand, to continue researching and expanding the expressive possibilities that my artistic practice offers me, since the development of the artistic work always requires a lot of time and discipline, and on the other hand, I would love to be able to establish a larger and more equipped workshop in the future to develop more printmaking procedures and also modern art printing technologies in order to generate a space that serves as a training and residency workshop for other artists.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: edwingarcia_graphicarts
- Facebook: Edwin García Graphic Arts
- Linkedin: Edwin García Maldonado
- Twitter: @edwin_gama
- Other: [email protected]
Image Credits
Photo 1, 2 and 3 by Julietnys Rodríguez Photo 4, 5 ,6, 7 and 8 by Edwin García