Interview: Mar Garrido

With a BA in Fine Arts from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a PhD in Fine Arts from the University of Granada, Mar Garrido‘s artistic activity is focused on photography and video creation. She worked as creative in TVE, performing headers, and special promotions chain programs especially related to film. Currently she teaches Audiovisual Projects in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Granada. She has participated in international festivals and biennials of video art in Madrid, Barcelona, Edinburgh, Buenos Aires, Tenerife, Izmir or Nicosia. Se has made fourteen photography and video art solo exhibitions.

Luca Curci – When you start practicing art and why?
Mar Garrido – I really don’t know exactly where the boundaries are, when I was a child, I remember myself always drawing and making clay figures. I guess the conscious decision that I wanted to devote myself to art, was taken when I started studying Fine Arts. I think I started to devote to this activity as a way of trying to understand the world, to provide me with answers.

L.C. – Can you talk about your artistic work? Which are your inspirations?
M.G. – Going around the city trying to understand it, deconstructing and re-build it. As contemporary flaneur work with the look, the walk, the everyday that erases the traces of individuality. The look that flows from me to the subject / object and these I look back. Both photography and videoart, I work with everyday elements of reality. The stain, the color point, the face of fatigue, all are looking us, while sending unavoidable that we will indicate the invisible and make a point of impossibility. I am interested and inspires by human gesture, gestures of contemporary urban residents, gestures that speak of the memory of a presence, the trail, the absence.

L.C. –  What are you currently working on?
M.G. – I am currently producing a series of videos about the city and gesture, on human flows and contemporary gesture. Simultaneously with the realization of the videos, I elaborate photographic sequences. I am especially interested this dialectic, the mystery surrounding the border between still image and moving image. Imagine all the possibilities that are behind the frozen image, the image would be logical course was in motion and yet remains still.

L.C. – What was the best advice given to you as an artist?
M.G. – Always work, do not to let the routine steal your enthusiasm and excitement. The same creative process opens doors, some things lead to others. The development of each piece discover new realities, new solutions.

L.C. – What is art for you?
M.G. – The attempt to make the visible the invisible.

L.C. – What do you think about International ArtExpo organization?
M.G. – Well as you can imagine, I feel “you speak my own language”, themes interest you are my inspiration. For me it was a great chance to get in touch with your organization.

L.C. – Do you think International ArtExpo organization can represent an opportunity for artists?
M.G. – Of course I think it’s an opportunity. Is undoubtedly a showcase, an international platform expands and promotes the work.