Hello Dear Alexandra Sheren. Thank you for giving us the chance to Interview with you. Our first question is how the “Quarantine” affects your art?


Actually, surprising as it may sound, but it is giving me lots of new opportunities. First of all the ability to slow down and listen what wants to be heard inside of me. I think listening is the most important thing for any kind of art, but we don’t always have enough space and time for listening ourselves. So now can be a moment to start mastering it.
 
 
 
 
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what drove you to choose art as a career?


I have been doing art for as long as I can remember myself. Photography and music were my favorite. I studied art critics for one year but then decided I would better pursue language and creative writing… Eventually, life has turned me back to visual art again when I realised that writing was not enough for me to tell a story. I am not sure I can say I have chosen art as a career. In the end, art has chosen me. And I think this is true about all artists whose priority is telling a story, not making money.
 
 
 

Which of your artworks are you most proud of?


This question made me smile. I am not proud of any. I love them all. Some are more intimate for me, others are more artistic. I am open about my own style and creative process. I guess I do have certain patterns that I follow in my work. But I am not attached to being recognisable, I am more attached to going with the flow. So when I can go with the flow and when I am spontaneous that is when I feel accomplished.
 
 
 
 
Could you describe your normal day as an artist?


It is always different. If I shoot in the studio it is one kind of day, if I am working with Photoshop or video editing it is another kind of day. I love starting projects early in the morning, and sit with it through the day, watching how it is unfolding in front of me. But I sometimes start very late and night and can’t go to sleep until I finish.
 
 
 
 
Can you give us a spoiler on what’s coming next for Alexandra Sheren?


I guess I rather take it all as a continuum. Not sure if it is next, or already happening. I work on several projects right now. One of them is in cinematography, and it takes pretty much all of my energy. 
 
 
 

Hello Dear Barbara Vandendriessche. Thank you for giving us the chance to Interview with you. Our first question is how the “Quarantine” affects your art?

The quarantaine effects every human being for the moment: in our work situation, in our relations with family and friends, in our ability to do what we want to do: travel, enjoy free time, go to the sports, practice our hobby’s. Also for me that’s a burden, but it doensn’t affects my art, I think. It has been decelerating my shoots with models during the first lockdown. But that gave me the time to work deeper on editing, transforming existing images. I learnt morde about brushes in photoshop and made improvements in digital art.
Out of those exercisss came ‘Floating Beauties’, individuals floating through darkness. But in a seaking or exploring way. The series is not heavy, although the background is very dark. The movement of the bodies is rather light. For me it was a kind of methaphor of how I tried to experience the lockdown: being in strange times but trying to explore new paths.
 
In these strange and unusual times, what do you find is the most challenging part about being an Artist?

It is true that in these times things are put in a different daylight, opinions are polarized. But many people understood that living on in a rat race perhaps isn’t the right choice. Now that we aren’t able to come together and enjoy music, theatre, art in general, people realise that art isn’t just an thing on the side. For many people it is crucial in our way of living, it is an escape of daily life, a questioning of civilisation, pure amusement also, consolation maybe.
For me, it is a relief to be an artist in these times. I wander whether I would be able to miss creating or experiencing art so much during a year. Lots of friends of mine are actors and they are waiting for almost a year to play, to act, to do their job! It is a privilege to be able to escape real life and create beauty, confort, alternatives. I hope that, even by only sharing some of my work on facebook or instagram I can share some little ‘shots of beauty’, some ‘fragile little worlds’ in times where people need that more than ever.

We are seeing  dark themes stand out in your works. Can you tell us your artistic vision and what inspires you to work with your theme?

I worked for 20 years as a director and set designer at the theater. But more and more, photography, which I initially regarded as a sideline, invaded my professional path. I discovered how my experience within the theater influenced the language of my photography and experienced a sense of “back to basics”, of re-sourcing. In order to be able to clarify this more, I decided to leave the black box in 2017 and tell my story on the basis of photos and sculptures. My photos are often staged and focus on physicality, emotion or expression. They look for a physical and psychological vulnerability. My sculptures are a study of damage, both in the use of matter and in the expression of an emotionality. The broken, the damaged, the unfinished and confused are represented in different ways through heads and bodies. Yet there is always a “sparkle”, sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally, perceptible.
 
My photography is theatrical. But ‘theatricality’ is an elastic concept and also has many negative connotations: bombastic, exaggerated, false or artificial. That’s not my theatricality. This is how I define it: theatralization is the abstracting and enlargement of reality to evoke emotion in the viewer, not through reason, but directly appealing to an approach that can be traced to our ritual instincts. Theatricality as a pre-aesthetic instinct.
That is what I try to represent with my photography: how to portray the emotional body tragically? How to create a tragic image that expresses emotion and triggers emotion? Search for images with an intensity, no images with intentions. Images you look at because they tell you something, even if you do not immediately know what. Images that evoke a story, without being narrative themselves. Often with the female body as an expression of beauty.
 
What advice would you give to your younger self?

I would advice to be less humble, to be wanting to please less. You can’t do well to everybody. Your intuïtion is a preciuos gift: listen to it. Don’t think others are better than you just because they have bigger mouthes.
 
Can you give us a spoiler on what’s coming next for Barbara Vandendriessche?

For the moment I am working on photographs that are pure and perhaps sober for me, but that links the human body with subtile natural elements. But still in a artificial setting. By combining the body with an element of nature, I can focus more on nature than when putting a body in real nature, I think. Or rather, I am exploring the idea for the moment.
In june starts the international biennal summer photofestival “Lens op de mens” in Pelt, Belgium. I am one of the 5 invited photographers that show work on a specific place in the city, next to all the other participants that are shown in gardens and open places all over Pelt. I will be showing there the result of the photographs I am working on now. I don’t know yet what the title will be. Someting with nature perhaps? To be continued…
 
 
 

Hello Dear Kora Moya Rojo. Thank you for giving us the chance to Interview with you. Our first question is how the “Quarantine” affects your art?

Hi, thank you for having me! I'd say being in lockdown has had a positive impact on my art practice. There have been some stressful moments, of course, but drawing and painting helped me stay sane and disconnect. Having more free time has allowed me to fully focus on my work and experiment as I had never done before. During this time, I decided to experiment with my painting style, which led me to what I'm doing at the moment.
 
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what drove you to choose art as a career?

I'm a Spanish visual artist based in London, UK. I studied Fine Arts at the University of Murcia, Spain, and then I moved to the UK shortly after. 
I’d say my interest in art started when I was little. I feel very lucky to have grown up in a very creative environment where I felt encouraged to create. My grandfather spent the last years of his life drawing and writing in calligraphy. He’d combine someone’s name written in calligraphy with motifs and drawings around them. Seeing him create all day inspired me to start drawing and painting at a very young age.
 
What are you working on at the moment?

I'm working on my project "EMBRYO". "EMBRYO" was born at the beginning of lockdown and I've been working on it since then. This project means a lot to me because it felt like the beginning of a new era in my art practice. "EMBRYO" is completely different from anything I've done in the past, and that gave me the freedom I needed to start over and fully enjoy the creative process.
So far all the paintings I’ve done for this project are quite large so now I’m thinking of doing a series of smaller paintings that will represent different versions of the objects from my paintings.

When it comes to the subject matter of your work, what draws you to those themes?

I think that the fact that I came up with my project "EMBRYO" at the beginning of the pandemic was a way of getting detached from the situation we were all going through. My current work is inspired by nostalgia and memories from my childhood and teenage years, so getting lost in those memories sounded like the perfect plan at the time. Another factor that contributed to coming up with this subject was not being able to go anywhere. The absence of living new experiences made me want to reminisce past times and travel back in time through my paintings.


Can you give us a spoiler on what’s coming next for Kora Moya Rojo?

For the past few years, I've been focused on painting and developing my style but lately I’ve been thinking about making sculptures and work on art installations again. Hopefully you’ll see some three-dimensional works soon!
Later in the year, I’m going to spend a month in an art residency in Mexico and I’m very excited about it!
 

 
Hello Dear Rafael Pascuale Zamora. Thank you for giving us the chance to Interview with you. Our first question is how the “Quarantine” affects your art?
 
 Thank you for the opportunity,
The Quarantine has really influenced my artwork, specially in how the production has increased but also in the fact that its gotten me closer to the concepts that I´m  interested in .Here in Lima, Peru, where i currently live its being just like alot of places, we've been in a really close lock-down most of 2020, I got to say that I´m really luck to have my studio in the same place that I live in so that makes it easer to stay home and keep my sanity, also living with my wife, being neighbor with a fellow artist and having everything here helps a lot.
My work revolves around understanding human condition, our customs our actions as collective beings, the understanding of our surroundings, our perception of which we are and most importantly, the way reality works. So the current global situation has given me a chance to see how us human beings react to this pandemic, I’ve gotten the chance to see how fear can makes us be the worst version of ourselves, specially when death is right on the corner, letting us see how fragile we can really be. All of these feelings and information has nurtured my way of thinking about my self and others, giving me a chance to conceptually grow as an artist.
Also, all of this extra time has given me the chance to really improve the quality of my work, I've studied new pictorial and drawing techniques.

What do you believe it means to be an artist and how did you start with your art adventure?

To be an artist you have to be brave, brave enough to speak your mind, to try to decipher things that everyone else would miss, to show your way of seeing the world but at the same time put your ego aside, because, in my opinion, creation no longer belongs to the artist, it is a symbol of a way of thinking, of the materialization of an idea.
Art is the clearest reflection of the artist, and therefore a door to the deepest human thought.
This brings me to my own history as a human being, I don't know where my affinity for art comes from, maybe it was given or maybe learned, but what I know is that since I was little I had a great imagination, I played alone, created worlds and stories, but I was also very curious, he asked everything, he wanted to know everything. I think I'm still the same, just more aware of many things. My life has really taken me in many directions, but I will always be that nuclear being who wants to understand and do everything, but as I said before, art is for the brave, for those who are capable of sacrificing everything, and always continue to grow. I have sacrificed a lot in this life to obtain something that gives great strength to my work, the search for inner peace and to share something worthwhile.
  
What inspires you in your work, is there a driving factor that draws you to the easel?

My work is inspired by the search for knowledge, curiosity about my surroundings, the inner search and the human condition. I have a fairly great interest in human history, because through human evolution we have created different forms of communication, we have been able, through archetypal symbols, to create forms of transcending time and matter. I am fascinated with the symbolism found in myths and the hidden elements in our history. I am also very curious about topics that revolve around eastern beliefs, Buddhism, transcendentalism, as well as many philosophical, metaphysical and psychological currents. All this leads me to want to convert my ideas, toughs and curiosities to something material, to build windows that lead others to wonder the same as me. But in the same way, I feel that I could not be without creating, it is something that moves my life, like the engine that gives me more energy to live and see where all this takes me.
 
 
What is your biggest inspiration in your Art life?

I guess I'm inspired by life itself, it may sound a bit generic, but I think finding a balance between the way one wants to live and what one seeks conceptually speaking its very important. But the artist, in my opinion, seeks ¨inspiration¨ in balance itself, in hard work, in both mental and physical order, and thus a kind of inertia can be achieved where ideas come from a meditative state. The "inspiration" will comes from within.
 
 
 
Can you give us a spoiler on what’s coming next for Rafael Pascuale Zamora?
 
I am currently working on a project that will hopefully give me the opportunity to do a solo show. This project, which is in the production stage, tries to develop the idea of ​​repetitive archetypal symbols in mythological figures in the human imagination, and like these, they use the physical representation of a complete stranger to recreate the image of a character that goes beyond whether it's real or not. Now, by unifying these characters, who recreate the same symbol, I build a new being full of strangeness, surrealism and fantasy. I generate a kind of anthropomorphic chimera, a new being, the collection of ideas turned into a new entity. I am inspired by the concepts found in baroque painting, specifically the figure of the saints or religious characters with mythological characteristics.
these concepts catch my attention. Which, in this case, are full of archetypal allegories.