We were lucky to catch up with Liene Bosquê recently and have shared our conversation below.

Liene, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

I’d like to believe that all of the projects I embark on are meaningful in one way or another, but whenever a project involves public participation, for me, its meaning multiplies. My project Collecting Impressions is such a case. It consists of socially engaged walks where the public is asked to actively engage with their surroundings. The project reflects on the complex relationship between cultural history, urban landscape, and its citizens.
Utilizing walking as an art-making tool, I have led public walking tours within the urban settings of multiple cities throughout the United States––New York, Chicago, Denver, and Miami—as well as in Sao Paulo, Brazil over the course of 10 years. During those encounters, participants collect direct clay impressions of the architectural environment surrounding them. While on these urban walks, I am equipped with a cart that holds blocks of wet clay and I invite the public (people living within the neighborhood and visitors) to create physical impressions of the communal landscape design, while at the same time inviting them to share stories of their experiences in the area. Collecting Impressions aims to explore quotidian paths while engaging with public audiences in order to highlight the overlooked details of everyday design, transforming the mundane into artifacts.

In many of these walks, I address historical architecture and structures of civic design of the city where the project is held, examining what kinds of public spaces are available within each community and how they are used.

Interaction with the public incorporates the sensibility of both the local community and visitors alike, as the groups walk together in search of architectural and urban design details that visually and culturally define the city. The project hinges on the dialogue between strangers who share personal stories, provide suggestions of new places to find impressions, and create impressions that will eventually become part of the collection of ceramics from other cities where the project has already been carried out, as well as any future iterations where it will be exhibited.

Creating a continuous long-term project that replicates the study of civic design in various local communities is beneficial in that the research and findings can accumulate into a broader investigation. One of the iterations of this series consisted of an exhibition and public programming at Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space in New York from March to April of 2015. Titled Shifting Impressions, it consisted of three public walks in the Lower East Side, and an exhibition that highlighted a collection of objects and tools developed during City Souvenirs.
Through the lens of the Essex Street Market in Manhattan and its impending redevelopment in 2018, audiences had a chance to join me on an expedition of the neighborhood, where they investigated the multiple histories of the Lower East Side and created impressions of forgotten or overlooked spaces and designs. The newly shaped objects then accumulated in the gallery, located inside of the market, and created an abstract record that conflated both personal and collective memory of the market and its surrounding areas. In the gallery, audiences were able to handle and study the clay objects, as well as create new marks by using sand and graphite, reimagining the origin of each impression and contributing to the project’s shared narrative.
The identity of the Lower East Side is tied to its consistently changing physical, cultural, and social landscape. Shifting Impressions embraced this essence by incorporating change and evolution into the design of the exhibition and the presentation of three tailored public walks.
During each walking performance, I focused on various sites of the neighborhood through three different conceptual lenses that highlight its heterogeneous identity within civic design. The first walk explored the neighborhood’s embedded immigrant history, the second walk engaged with its historically artistic identity, and the last walk examined the unidentified spaces of future changes due to land-use development. For example, on the first walk we ventured into the LES with an eye toward the neighborhood’s diverse cultural heritage and immigrant history; on the second walk we examined the artistic identity of the LES by looking at sites integral to artists in the late 70s, 80s, and 90s; and on the third walk I took participants on an experimental and contemplative walk that focused on the changing landscape of the LES over time by identifying sites of past and future change.
I embarked on each walk from Cuchifritos Gallery, where participants joined. Most participants chose to stay for the entire length of the walk, and new participants joined from the street at certain points as well. Together, the group shared anecdotes about their past experiences in the neighborhood and made impressions of the sites with porcelain clay, contributing to the collective, the experience of each individual walk.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a Brazilian-American visual artist and arts educator based in Miami, FL. I create installations, sculptures, site-specific works, as well as socially engaged projects that have been exhibited in museums and galleries including MoMA PS1 in New York, Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art of North Miami, among others. My artwork has also been included in international exhibitions in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Turkey, and South Korea at places such as Museu de História Natural in Lisbon, Museu de Arte de Ribeirão Preto, and Sesc in São Paulo.

I have an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a BFA from the São Paulo State University, and a BA in Architecture and Urbanism from Mackenzie University in Brazil. In 2019 I received the Ellies Creator Award, Miami’s Visual Arts Awards, and a WaveMaker Grant .

I am interested in the relationship between place and people—the influence they have on one another, the conflict that exists between the two, and the traces that are left once they have come into contact. In turn, my multidisciplinary practice deals with the exploration of sensorial experiences within natural, urban, architectural, and personal spaces. The use of specific matter is an important element of my work, such as natural fibers, clay, and rust, among others. Through them I emphasizes context, memory, and history.

I have dedicated 20 years of my creative career to the field of contemporary art as well as art education. I have been active in my art practice, presenting my ongoing scholarship through exhibitions, performances, lectures, classes, workshops, and panels on both the national and international stage. Currently I am an Art Studio faculty member at the University of Miami. Previously I have also taught at the Queens Museum in NY to underserved Latinx immigrant communities.

I am fortunate to be a current artist in residence at Oolite Arts where I have physical studio space and where visitors can schedule a studio visit by making an appointment with me.

In addition, during Miami Art Week this year you can encounter my artwork in a few different locations. In Miami Beach at Faena Hotel you can see my most recent installation for No Vacancy, a public art program organized by the City of Miami Beach, on view from November 16 to December 14, 2023. You can also visit the work mentioned here, Collecting Impressions, as part of the South Florida Cultural Consortium exhibition at the Arts and Culture Center Hollywood, curated by Meagan Kent, up through January 21, 2024. Last but not least,  I am participating in this group exhibition with Miami Artists at Dimensions Variable, opening November 18.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I believe that working on an artistic project for a long time and seeing it evolve through many changes qualifies as a story of resilience. So, I’ll tell you more about Collecting Impressions. This project is a continuation of City Souvenirs, which began in 2009 as a collaboration with artist Nicole Seisler while we were students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). The last walk we led together was in 2013, this is when our collaboration ended, and the last exhibition we participated jointly was in 2015. What then took a long time for me to figure out how I was going to continue the project on my own, in my own way, and no longer as a duo. We are currently working independently to expand the project into new geographic and material territories. In my efforts to extend the project over this past decade, I have focused heavily on the mobility and community aspects, and explored different materials that might facilitate this process. Collecting Impressions continues to evolve, and since 2017 I have been using cyanotypes, which is an alternative photographic process that uses contact printing with light. For that series of walks titled Towards Light, the participants and I have been looking for sunlight casting shadows on the surrounding architecture to capture specific moments in time. Printing the cyanotypes on fabric allows for the imprints to be flexible for travel (as opposed to using clay)—it dries faster and all fits in a suitcase.

Realizing this work over the past decade and continuing the project on my own has allowed me the unique opportunity to investigate the historical and cultural significance of built environments in different cities throughout the United States, Brazil, and Portugal, while highlighting community engagement through the production of art in the public sphere. The object-making process initiates a tangible connection between audience and site, while articulating the conceptual nuances of the artwork.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The freedom and flexibility of the creative process is the greatest reward. This allows for me to birth, or materialize ideas in a way that perhaps wouldn’t otherwise be possible outside of the creative field. There is room for failure, which ultimately leads to a more meaningful and impactful artistic practice.

I also feel confident in my practice as a visual artist and my expertise in arts education because of the diverse cultural, racial, and economic demographics I have successfully engaged with––both through my projects and past teaching commitments. This connection is incredibly enriching and an important part of my work. I have contributed to the learning community by emphasizing the exploration of 3D Design within the broader areas of public art, sculpture, and fibers, and specifically in relation to wide-ranging issues of technological development, sustainability, multiculturalism, and social justice.

Beyond teaching at a University of Miami, I also engage with the various communities throughout Miami by developing public programs in partnership with local nonprofits and other institutions. These types of programs and the teaching component of my work is an additional rewarding aspect of being a creative, they allow for interaction between myself and a diverse group of people, but they also create a space for people to interact with each other and their environments besides developing their creative and critical thinking.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lienebosque.com/
• Instagram: @lienebosque
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/lienebosque
• Youtube: Liene Bosquê

Image Credits
Philipp Karp, Bianca Reis Verdosi, Wriggleswort and Philipp Muller