Tamara Kostianowski
INTERVIEW BY FRANCESCA AUSTIN-OCHOA
Your work deals heavily with geography, diaspora and personal identity, which transcends beyond nations and cultures. What is your concept of home and how does that reflect in your work?
The idea of home really initiated my search to create an image. I have come to terms with the fact that there is not really a home for me anymore. The more time passes I realize that after migration, home for me has become an abstract concept. It is in us. However, I still find the influence that a place has on the development of a person very interesting. My artwork is very anchored in the imagery of Argentina. When I grew up there in the ‘70’s, Argentina was the world’s main exporter of beef. There were cows, cattle and their carcasses on the streets, in the markets, being unloaded from trucks.
I was just in Buenos Aires this past Summer. It was everything beef and everything leather.
Yes, and now it is mild. Now there is an awareness of health. When I grew up every meal consisted of beef but this is getting into the food topic. A lot of people think my work is about food politics but that is not what I see my work being about. It was just spending so much time seeing these carcasses and not thinking of them as elements of pride like most Argentinians do when they sit down to their asados. To me, the carcasses are sacrificial beings, a quiet death that speaks to the history of violence of my country. The more I learn, I realize that this violence is universal. My work is more about consumption.
I have been living in the US for ten years, my parents still live in Argentina and every time I go back, I feel that it is becoming more violent. Everything from traffic accidents to crime. I’m not sure if it is just Argentina, or if it is a Latin American phenomenon, or a universal one. Maybe it is the distance of being an immigrant.
Your Guggenheim Fellowship biography suggests that you are creating an architecture of violence… violence of Argentina, violence of these corpses. What is your experience of violence? What is your understanding of it?
It is everywhere but it is taboo. It is not openly shown in the media, it is something that is hidden. Ubiquitous but not there.
Or, if it is in the media it is sensationalized?
Yes, but mostly it is not there. I think that when it is not seen or shown, the idea of violence is just perpetuated. If we all saw it, I think there would be more of a stand against it. What I am trying to do in my work is put the image of violence out there. As an artist I do this strategically. I care very much about beauty. I don’t want to beautify violence, but I want people to be able to see it. If it was too repulsive, I think most people would not be able to see it.
My grandmother was murdered in Argentina in 2004. You know, you read stories in the newspaper, but never think something horrible will happen to you. But it did. I felt I needed to speak out and give it a perspective, not be silent about violence.
On the other hand, my conception of violence has a lot to do with my own experience with changing locations and with immigration.
That is in its own way, a bloody history. What I was saying earlier, was that a place marks your body in a way, or your identity. That is what I am working with now, printing maps directly onto meat. Our experiences of place goes through our flesh.
This leads to a lot of other things. I started the series with a map of Argentina, which has a very bloody history. On the Europeans’ first organized trip to the south of Argentina, the Patagonia, their mission was to eradicate the indigenous population. That is how Argentina was founded and the violence goes on and on. I started with Argentina. I have a love for this country, but I moved on to mapping other places, because this history of violence can be found in every nation. It started as a history of self, but transcended that and I hope it can speak to more people, because no place is immune to violence.
One of my favorite pieces in this series, which actually doesn’t have a map, is the leather bound book with pieces of meat for pages.
Yes, I have recently moved from making the carcasses out of fabric to working directly with meat. Though, there are a lot of technical challenges.
I am curious about the fabric pieces. They are made from your own clothes, correct?
Do you have anything left in your wardrobe?
Yes. The clothing came into the work because the first year I moved to the States and was going to school, the economy in Argentina crashed and the Argentine peso lost a lot of value overnight. Finding myself with so little resources to buy art supplies, I started looking at all the clothing I had brought with me. I had packed a lot of sweaters and jackets in fear of the winter. When I incorporated the material, there was a real connection and
familiarity with it.
It’s like your second skin.
Definitely.
I felt at home working with my clothing, and it also became a political statement for me. Not buying supplies and participating in this consumerist society. Most of the clothes are still mine and now I incorporate sheets and towels and things like that. Sometimes I get pieces from the second hand store. It still connects the conceptual bridge that I want to create, that the animals are really not animals, but people.
great blog, where can I find this theme?
i’ve been reading this log since you started it. just thought I’d tell ya