Entrevista a Frida Larios por Xánath Caraza
Agradezco
a Frida Larios la siguiente entrevista para los lectores de La Bloga. Ha sido
un gusto trabajar con Frida virtualmente y espero en algún momento conocernos
en persona. Lo siguiente es lo que Frida
Larios ha enviado para hoy. Espero y sea
de su agrado.
Frida
Larios (de padres salvadoreños), es
autora del galardonado proyecto y libro: Nuevo Lenguaje (Visual) Maya que
rediseña una selección de los ancestrales logo-jeroglíficos mayas para uso
contemporáneo. Larios es también embajadora para la Red Internacional de Diseño Indígena (INDIGO) y el
Consejo de Embajadores del Diseño
Latino.
Frida Larios: I met Xánath, who has kindly opened this space
for an interview, through collaboratively working with the Smithsonian Latino
Virtual Museum and the Indigenous Design Collective, Washington, DC, which
myself and Manuel (Che’) León, Guatemala, conform, for the 2015 Smithsonian LVM
Day of Dead celebrations. Xánath contributed with one of her latest book’s, Ocelocíhuatl,
evocative poem, titled: “Weaver of Words”.
“Every morning, you don your white huipil, iridescent
embroidering on cotton, printed symbol of the plumed serpent, evolution. Black
tresses floating in the air, tangling with the threads of the voice of Ehécatl, God of Wind…
Let the maize dances begin.”
Based and inspired by her word, the Indigenous
Design Collective created a digital
mural that was commissioned during the 2015, national celebrations. In this
sense, the process was very unique. We created this video to document it:
It turns out Xanath had been an invited to the
Segundo Festival Internacional
de Poesia de Occidente in El Salvador. During
her visit to El Salvador, she visited Joya de Cerén archaeological park. The
Joya de Cerén park museum is home to a “whimsical” (like some like to call it)
intervention of my authorship on its surface walls, which uses some of the “picto-glyphs”
found in my New Maya Language book. Xanath and me had unknowingly met through
poetry, through the visual poetry at Joya de Cerén’s museum walls.
The New Maya Language “picto-glyphs” narrative
tell the story of the UNESCO World Heritage archaeological site nicknamed the “Pompeii
of the Americas”, because it was preserved under 5 meters of volcanic ash for
nearly 1400 years. The ancestral maya community was initially “uncovered” by UC
Boulder archaeologist, Dr Payson Sheets, who up until this day has spent his
life researching it.
I have given the “picto-glyphs” that special
name because they are created from the modern notion of a picto-gram and
the historic logo-graphic content of a hiero-glyph, together they
form this new concept/word: “pictoglyph.” Each pictoglyph is a re-design,
re-composition and re-interpretation that intends to respect the ancestral
myths and meanings coded by the Maya artists and at the same time, make it
relevant to today’s Central American society (or what was Mesoamerica: Mexico,
Belize, Guatemala, and western Honduras and El Salvador) and the Central
American in the US, diaspora. Or to anyone interested in learning the basics
about this script.
The
New Maya Language, 115-page art-object book, was researched and conceived,
very far away from any Maya site, but very close to my heart’s roots, during
masters degree studies in Communication Design at the University of the Arts
London (from 2003-2005). Joya de Cerén was my case study. But it was during our three-year community
living in the Maya-chortí mountains/reserve in Copán, Honduras (from
2008-2011), that the project and book with the same name, was dialogued,
socialised, read, cried, written, illustrated, designed and crafted.
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New Maya Language hand-bound
book containing a friendly introduction to Classic Maya writing and
illustrative decoding of how the New Maya (Visual) Language system is created.
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With Dr. Eva Martínez, Instituto
Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, archaeologist and Jeovanny Peraza, guide
and birder, at the parqueo Arqueológico de Copán in Copán Ruinas, Honduras.
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Joya de Cerén was celebrating 20 years of
being an UNESCO World Heritage Site. To celebrate the historic date, the
Secretary of Culture of the Presidency of El Salvador commissioned these murals
in 2013. After a full year of planning, designing, artworking and painting by
Universidad Don Bosco design-student volunteers and even volunteer advocates
within the Secretary of Culture, with ecological paints and materials sponsored
by Sherwin Williams of Central America, the work of art, which was a 100%
donation from Frida Larios studio (my studio and collaborators), was
inaugurated on March 6, 2014.
The Joya de Cerén
archaeological park “Centro de Interpretación” before and after the walls
surface “New Maya Language picto-glyphs” painted murals.
During the process, the idea and need for a
child facilitation tool became palpable. The Green Child wooden puzzle, on of
the picto-glyphs created during our living (with my husband and first son)
between the mountains of Copán and frequent visits to my parents home in
Antiguo Cuscatlán, became the main character in my first children’s book (I
have since then published a second one, written by Vanessa Núñez), titled: The
Village that was buried by an Erupting Volcano, based on Joya de Cerén’s
archaeological findings, with collaborations by Dr. Payson Sheets, who also
appears in the narrative. The text is set in Spanish, English and the New Maya
(visual) Language is the link between the two languages. The book was published
on the murals inauguration day. We invited children from the Joya de Cerén
locality for a reading and interpretation workshop, which was genuinely led by
the children themselves. While we walked around the building (i.e. the murals)
they were voicing their words, thoughts and “translations”, responding to the
short book reading and their senses, which were being ignited by organic forms,
giant 4-meter tall picto-glyphs, vivid colours and by just touching the paint
texture on the walls.
La Aldea que fue
Sepultada por un Volcán en Erupción, Spanish, English and Logo Maya Languages,
children’s book.
Workshop with Colegio
Alfonsina Storni, Sitio del Niño, elementary level children.
Taking the project to Central American
children had been my vision since the cold London days. But it was only then
that it became a reality. The children brought the project to life. Since that
day, when I was already living in the US (first Berkeley and now Washington,
DC), I haven’t stopped facilitating talks and workshops, for children, youth,
design-students and general audiences, alike.
By the end of 2015, a wonderful text was
published in Scientific American about Joya de Cerén’s new research findings. A sak be’ [sacred path] leads the way to a “yuca” parcel and
other parcels with diverse crops. One of the many distinctive facts found at
Joya de Cerén is that agri-cultural methodology seems to have been preserved to
our day by local campesinos, the other one is that through the investigation of
these crops, it was found that they had an independent, self-sustainable,
social system. “The data at the excavation
site tells the story of a community that seemed to have plenty of freedom to
make crucial decisions about family organization, religion and food crops...”*
Joya de Cerén
archaeological site excavated structures. Temascal hit by a lava bomb at far
back.
Joya de Cerén, is a vivid
example of the spiritual and natural functioning of an ancestral community. Dr.
Payson Sheets kindly forewords in my little children/youth book:
"At Joya de Cerén we see
the roots of Salvadoran families of today. And the basic needs of yesterday’s
families are much like those of today, as parents need to feed and clothe
themselves and their children, and provide shelter. They need to store and
process food, and they need to cooperate with their neighbors for the
betterment of all. It is my hope that this compelling book be widely available
to Salvadorans and others that visit the archaeological site, and in many other
venues all across the country."
Xánath Caraza: Who is Frida Larios? How do you define yourself for your audience?
As a mother, Indigenous designer, “culture as
cure” activist, sports advocate, typo-graphic designer, anthro-designer,
illustrator, toy creator and huipil designer. Some people, like friend Dr.
Payson Sheets said: “you are a humanist, Frida”, and a dear Australian
Indigenous illustrator, Anthony F. Ward, said I was a: “propagator of
culture...” My husband, a Kentuckian/Honduran, in his frank style says I am a “starving
artist.” For some reason, maybe because my training and eye comes from the
typo/graphic design discipline and not art, I don’t consider myself entirely an
artist, even though everyone here in Washington, DC calls me: “artist.” The New
Maya Language project is open-ended (multi-disciplined) so it has potential to
grow into (almost) any branch–it just needs a pictoglyph as a seed (!).
XC: As a child, who first introduced you to
art? Who guided you?
My mother. After becoming the mother of three
girls, me the eldest, she decided to study interior design at the same local
San Salvador art school where, a decade later, I started studying a bachelors
degree in graphic design, the Escuela de Artes Aplicadas Rosemarie Vásquez Liévano,
but I ended up finishing it in University College Falmouth in England. Because
she was a full-time mother by day, she ended up staying awake at night to
finish her university projects. I used to watch her paint endless pieces on
paper and illustration board using tempera, the same technique I know use for
my works on paper. Brush paint is the technique used on the Joya de Cerén
Museum (Centro de Interpretación) murals, too, not spray. Somehow, there is an
unconscious continuity.
Frida Mabel García de
Larios, QDDG, mother.
My father has been my best friend, and now in
his elder years, my mentor. Before having to retire because of the advancement
of his Parkinson’s disease, he was a practicing phytopathologist (the study of
plant disease), which is very uncommon in El Salvador. His scientific
background and research excellence, subconsciously led my interest in organic
systems, and in ancestral design systems that intrinsically integrated the
earth we stand on and live from.
Thereafter, there have been key people like
Andrew Haslam, head of the masters at Central Saint Martins College of Art and
Design, Type and Language pathway, and typographer. It was during the weekly
group sessions led by him and fed by my multi-cultural peers in London, that I
developed the seed idea for this now New Maya Language project, but that I had
then, probably more aptly titled: New Maya Hieroglyphs. I say more aptly
because now some people get confused between a spoken language and a visual
language, which is what it really is, entirely picto-graphically oriented, an
interpretation and re-design of selected Maya logographic/hieroglyphic
vocabulary that allows to create new narratives.
Another important guide has been Dr. Alexandre
Tokovinine, who kindly spent much time in workshop sessions while we were living
in the mountains of Copán at Hacienda San Lucas.
XC: How
did you first become an artist?
I consider myself a cultural typo-grapher/ a
visual activist. The nature and visual form of my typo-graphic works has
allowed me to play in the art realm, where there are no scripts--just the open
mind of viewers without expecting to literally understand what they are seeing,
as opposed to design.
XC: In which city? When did you start to present
your work? And, what impact did seeing
your first art show have on you?
In London. At the Embassy of El Salvador in
London, I was given my first solo exhibition opportunity and was motivated by
the Ambassador at the time to do it. Every pictoglyph was hand-painted in
tempera on paper and that became art. This is when I became an “artist” without
consciously wanting to.
XC: Do
you have any favorite artist / artists? Could you share some of your
reflections of what drew you toward him or her or them?
Frida Kahlo will sound a like a cliché. Frida
Kahlo is one of them. Not because she is named Frida, but because of her
connection to her Indigeneity, mainly through her self-styling, through her
huipiles. Her German background probably allowed her to navigate between the
modern and the Indigenous found in the Mexican land.
XC: What is a day of creative writing like for
you?
Today is a day of creative writing. I write
because I have to. What I enjoy is visualising words, visualising thoughts,
ideas, emotions, history, myths. I write to complement what cannot be said in
pictures.
XC: Could you comment on your life as a cultural
activist?
Culture shapes the value of a society. I
consider myself a cultural activist. Without culture, society is empty. Without
knowing where we come from, which land is ours and our ancestors’s, we cannot
imagine. Imagination is our symbiotic union with the spirit of the land.
Imagination is the food of the world, it nurtures poor and rich alike. We,
Centroaméricanos, can be rich in the preservation of our imagination, to be
able to comprehend our past, to be able to understand the future.
XC: What
projects are you working on at the moment that you would like to share?
I have just been commissioned to create an
installation for the American University Museum at Katzen Arts Center.
The supernatural monster that is being designed into the doors is part of my
new, post-New Maya Language, catalogue series and scroll book, titled: Animales Interiores.
Museo de Arte de El
Salvador, MARTE, August-September, 2015, exhibition. Entrance to exhibit via
underworld monster.
I am working on an Autumn 2016 exhibition and
community/children’s programme, with la Casa de la Cultura de El Salvador
(the new El Salvador Cultural Institute at the Embassy of El Salvador in
Washington, DC), which involves itinerating the Animales Interiores solo
exhibition collection from the Museo de Arte de El Salvador (MARTE) to
Washington, DC.
Museo de Arte de El
Salvador, MARTE, August-September, 2015, exhibition. Bats.
Museo de Arte de El
Salvador, MARTE, August-September, 2015, exhibition. Embossed wooden
infographic presenting Animales Interiores.
With the Indigenous Design Collective we are
designing pictographic pieces and facilitations for the Maya Creativity and
Culture Milieu taking place at the Smithsonian Museum of the American
Indian in Washington, DC in September 2016.
We are on the initial stages of working in a
Spanish learning kit to facilitate the language cognition through empathetic
Central American pictograms (using New Maya Language picto-glyphs as a starting
point) in collaboration with Ellen Shapiro, Alphagram
author and creator.
XC: What
advice do you have for other artists?
Look in the forest to create a city.
Look inside to create outside.
Look back to create forward.
“Codices burn, buildings decay, language can
be lost, a narrative once told lives forever.”
Frida Larios (de padres salvadoreños), es autora del galardonado proyecto y
libro: Nuevo Lenguaje (Visual) Maya que rediseña una selección de los
ancestrales logo-jeroglíficos mayas para uso contemporáneo. Larios es también embajadora para la Red Internacional de Diseño Indígena (INDIGO) y el
Consejo de Embajadores del Diseño
Latino. Tiene
un BA (licenciatura) del
Falmouth College of Arts en Inglaterra y un MA (maestría) en Diseño de la Comunicación del Central
Saint Martins College of Art & Design, Universidad de las Artes de Londres.
Ha sido educadora desde
el año 2000, en universidades como el London College of Fashion y Camberwell College of Arts en
Londres, y más recientemente, en
tres escuelas secundarias de Maryland (en sociedad con CASA), con un alto porcentaje de jóvenes
inmigrantes
de origen centroamericano, de una zona vulnerable, con quienes está co-creando
murales culturales basados en el sistema del Nuevo Lenguaje Maya.
Ha expuesto de forma individual en el Centro Cultural de México en
Guatemala, el Museo para la identidad Nacional en Tegucigalpa, la Embajada de
El Salvador en Londres y la de Paris, entre otros; y colectivamente en en el Dongdaemun Design Park en Seúl,
Corea (selección de 20), la Academia Central de Bellas Artes en Beijing, China
(selección de 80 tipógrafos internacionales), entre otros museos y centros de arte a nivel internacional.
A través de su proyecto, Nuevo Lenguaje Maya, Larios
ha sido facilitadora, consultora
y/o colaboradora de las siguientes instituciones
culturales en Washington: el Indigenous
Design Collective, el Smithsonian Latino Center, el Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum, el Museo Nacional del Indio
Americano, la Embajada de El Salvador, CASA de Maryland, American University Museum at Katzen Arts Center, DC
Public Library, entre otras organizaciones nacionales e internacionales.
Larios y su trabajo han aparecido destacados en la
BBC2, BBC Radio 4, Getty Images, la Agencia France-Presse (AFP), Print Magazine, The Daily
Telegraph, Courrier International, TASCHEN, Thames & Hudson, entre
otros.
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