_{Image of courtesy of Juan Pablo Medina}

Interview: Juan Pablo Medina

Luca Curci talks with Juan Pablo Medina during THE BODY LANGUAGE 2019 at THE ROOM Contemporary Art Space.

Juan Pablo Medina is a mexican visual artist who works with photography and videoart.
In 2007 he became a graduated chemical engineer in Guadalajara city. In 2015 he studied photography in the Photography Institute in San Francisco and was selected to assist to the Photography Production Seminar (SPF) at Centro de la Imagen in 2016. In the same year he recieved the important mexican scholarship “Jovenes Creadores del FONCA”. In 2017 he participated in the Bienal de Artes Visuales Arte emergente in Monterrey city.
Medina´s work has been shown in countries such as México, USA, Venezuela, Austria, Portugal and Spain. He lives and works in Monterrey.

                                   g

_{Image of courtesy of Juan Pablo Medina}

                                        g
Luca Curci – What’s your background? What is the experience that has influenced your work the most?
Juan Pablo Medina – I finished my degree in photography at the Photography Institute of San Francisco in 2015. By 2016, was selected along with 14 artists to participate in the Photography Production Seminar at Centro de la Imagen (México city). I was awarded with a prestigious grant by the National Fund for Culture and Arts (a public agency of the mexican federal government) in the same year.
In addition, an experience that has been a fundamental part of my work is being a chemical engineer. My interest on image began early from this career.

LC – What are you currently working on?
JPM – I am working on a project called “the black image”. At this moment, I am exploring ways to digitally interrupt the instagram´s feed and propose a slower reading between images. You can see the work in progress at @jpmedina84.

LC – Where do you find your inspiration?
JPM – I’m very dedicated on observing images from different places, such as cinema, Video-Art, texts and most recently social media as well.
Videoart has allowed me to be more experimental in my work. Experimentation leads me to error, and error puts me always on the track of producing images.

                                           g

_{Image of courtesy of Juan Pablo Medina}

                               g

LC – Did your style change over the years? In which way?
JPM – Definetly it has changed, I can recall the two main events that have influenced my work. In 2015 I participated at Iberencontros, in Portugal. There I met for the first time the videoart language. This created a disruption on my style. Since then, I have been exploring the media and participated on important festivals, such as Nodo CCS (Venezuela), Proyector (Spain) and Fonlad (Portugal). Working with artists from other areas has made a huge impact on my vision too, for instance the collaboration done with Fabian Ávila Elizalde. Fabián is an incredible musician who created the sound of the artwork shown at the body of language exhibition: “Este mundo, tal como lo vemos, está sucediendo” (this world, as seen, is happening).

LC – Are your artworks focused on a specific theme?
JPM – I am interested on recording human behavior, in a way that offers commentary to the process of surveillance or the technology used to surveil.

LC – We were attracted by your last artistic production, has the artwork presented been created for the festival or as a part of preexisting works?
JPM – This world, as seen, is happening, has been first shown at the Misericordia Archives and The Room of Contemporary Art, as part of the Body Language exhibition in Venice Festival.
I worked this videoart piece during 2018 and It was due to ITSLIQUID GROUP that I first displayed it.

LC – In which way the artwork presented in our exhibition is connected with the festival’s theme?
JPM – The video shows a compilation of actions where people is recorded by surveillance cameras. All of these actions seem not to have any reason to be surveilled, but no matter what the body is still captured by a machine, that apparently is not controlled by a human.
So, the connection resides on the paradox shaped between the body language and the movement of the camera.

                     g

_{Image of courtesy of Juan Pablo Medina}

                                             g 

LC – Do you think ITSLIQUID GROUP can represent an opportunity for artists?
JPM – Sure. Luca Curci purposed important and coherent visual essays, with a strong intention to show important issues of contemporaneity. Thus, ITSLIQUID GROUP´s open calls are a great opportunity to participate and dialogue with other artists and show the artwork worldwide.

LC – What are your suggestions about our services? Is there something more we can provide to artists?
JPM – ITSLIQUID GROUP has done a great networking with important partners such as Palazzo Ca’ Zanardi , the Misericordia Archives and The room of Contemporary Art. I will say: keep on!
The communication with the artist before the exhibition is pretty good. I will only suggest to give a feedback to each of the selected artists about the exhibition of their artworks. Any comment you could give about the public reaction to the artwork would be very important for the artist.

LC – What do you think about ITSLIQUID Platform?
JPM – One of the most important things for artists is showing their work, and ITSLIQUID GROUP means a very strong platform to do that. I have to say that its marketing team does a great job. Results can be seen at first sight in a successful opening of the exhibition and besides that, the visualization of the artworks through ITSLIQUID GROUP social media is worth it, both facebook and instagram accounts reaches a lot of views and people engagement.
So it is a great opportunity for artists to get known worldwide.

                          g

_{Image of courtesy of Juan Pablo Medina}