We recently connected with Mely Barragan and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Mely, thanks for joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I am a fulltime / visual artist, for the past 25 years I have learned to juggle though selling art, teaching art, speaking of art, curating art, promoting art and consuming art.

During my teenage years I decided I wanted to be an artist, since then, all of my life decisions have orbited around that idea. I married a fellow artist and between both of us we have manage to maintain an ongoing art practice (individually). Our income is mutual, so we organize around that.
It’s not easy! but it is possible.

I started showing my work in all types of venues, creating small sales here and there. We are talking about DIY promotion and social links, when there was no social media, of course today things have changed.

It has been very important to me to have community connections, as in artist you represent your community not just yourself. This way, you can gather support, make sales, collaborate with institutions and many other ways to create resources from your network.

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 was born, raised and still live in Tijuana. My aesthetic objectives have focused on exploring the role of identity and of women within the power schemes of society. My work questions the existing visual formulas and addresses the consequences of human and gender relations; reflects on obsession, the absurd, the beautiful, the grotesque, nostalgia, time, the behavior of human relationships, etc. Play with words and compositions creating a fragmented atmosphere. I have individual and group exhibitions in Mexico, the United States, China, Morocco and several European countries, being awarded several times and having obtained various scholarships. I have carried out artistic residencies in Morocco, Cleveland, Beijing, Moscow, Monterrey, Oaxaca, Chiapas, among others. I was co-director of TJINCHINA Project Space in China and Tijuana, which has carried out an interesting exchange of contemporary art between Tijuana and China. My work is part of public and private collections such as the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Tijuana Cultural Center, Stanford University Libraries special collections, Elias Fontes Collection, among others. I was recently awarded the San Diego Art Prize 2023, something that makes me very proud to be recognized on both sides of the border, among other amazing artists from San Diego. You can find me in instagram as Mely Barragan or on my webpage melybarragan.com

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My journey, as mosts people life journey has been filled with positive and negative experiences. Yet I still believe that the positive experience far out weigh the negative ones. Being able to communicate my thoughts and hopes to such a wide array of people has been a true blessing in my life. And maybe the reason why I keep doing what I do. To somehow help comfort, or just share a quiet conversation with others.

My goal will be to keep on growing as a person, the older I become the more I understand and the more I value life. Art permits me to witness this growth and leave evidence of it in my work.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of my life as an artist is the freedom that comes with it. Self employment in the arts is hard as hell, yet owning your time in todays world is a great benefit.

My condition as a border artist has given me the opportunity to have a panoramic view of our world. Living in China taught me that deep down we are all the same and artificial borders such as this one deny most people the chance to look at the whole picture.

Contact Info:

• Website: melybarragan.com
• Instagram: @melybarragan @tercascolectiva
• Facebook: Mely Barragan
• Linkedin: melybarragan
• Youtube: Mely Barragan

Image Credits
Courtesy of the artist