Interview
Maria Paula Suárez
Maria Paula Suarez is a Colombian artist, based in New York City, where she got her Master's degree in Art Business at Sotheby's Institute of Art and graduated with distinctions. She has a bachelor's degree in visual arts from Universidad Javeriana, with an emphasis in the plastic area, and is certified as an illustrator by the School of Visual Arts in New York. She completed a pedagogy course at Harvard Online University as a leader of learning and currently explores the concept of resilience through mediums like pencil colors, illustrations, and embroidery on paper. Suarez 's work has been exhibited in Bogotá, New York, Tokyo, CDMX, and Madrid. She has participated in exhibitions such as the Regional Artists Salon in Colombia, SCOPE Art Show in Miami Beach, Affordable Art Fair in New York City, ARTBO Bogotá International Art Fair, and five solo exhibitions in CDMX, Bogotá, and three in New York City. María Paula has done curatorial assistance work with the General Consulate of Colombia in New York, which is why she has received recognition for her work in cultural management and communication in the arts sector.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“Sheesh, this probably is the easiest question in the interview! I feel, nowadays, an artist’s background and journey has much more weight than in the past. The short and practical answer is that I have a bachelor degree in visual arts from Universidad Javeriana, with an emphasis in the plastic area. I’m certified as an illustrator by the School of Visual Arts in New York, and completed a pedagogy course at Harvard Online University as a leader of learning.
Recently, I graduated from a Master's degree in Art Business at Sotheby's Institute of Art, with distinctions. All, amazing accomplishments, which I like to mention with pride and gratefulness. Yet, my background is also defined by the choices that led me to live the dream of being an artist and pursue this dream with discipline, commitment and respect to the profession. I went to an all-girls school in Colombia, very traditional education that responded to the society's needs at the time when I entered high school. One of their core values is to raise empowered woman to lead in the world! That part of their mission certainly stuck with me, understanding that there was no project too big for me to embrace it with grounded confidence.
My background is defined by engaging at an early age in projects that developed my artistic expressions, like cheerleading, extracurricular classes to enhance skills that I wanted to polish such as pottery, painting, and even artistic roller skating and Kumon. I like math, it’s probably not what I would do for a living, but I still like it. At college, I met amazing professors and professionals that work in the Latin American art industry who influenced me to understand what the local scene was showing, circulating and more importantly, demanding. I had my first art related job in the third semester of the Visual Arts Program. I worked as a mediator for a segment of ARTBO, Bogota's International art fair. And from that moment on, I understood the relevance of understanding the art business in order to navigate it with ease. I have always considered myself a curious person, so I would awe the start point of this journey back in time, when I was a little girl and sticker book encyclopedias, TV shows like Project Runway, and Art attack where a source of inspiration for me to engage in pursuing interests of mine.
Yes, I’m aware of the huge gap between the sources of inspiration that I just mentioned, but being completely honest, as years arrive I better understand how those activities as a kid have impacted my adult life and the honor of being able to highlight them as part of the journey I chose to ride, by being an artist, and it is just spectacular!”
What does your work aim to say? Does it comment on any current social or political issues?
“My work reflects on love, its various forms, and the use of language as a tool to understand it. What I am showing now is the result of a conscious exercise to understand the different relationships between human beings. We all can share a unique experience, and if emotions stimulate behavior, through my work, I seek to celebrate the right and responsibility to feel everything. Moreover, I consider my art to be on the realm of social studies, we all have emotions and we all interact and communicate through and with them. I approach my practice understanding to be alive is to be in a perpetual state of evolution, and this is an unprecedented experiment that I seek to address through my practice of embroidery on paper, aiming to generate models capable of providing new forms of self-awareness and reflection. All of this comes together in my work through words. Access to the right words can open up entire universes, and I've realized that the more we know, the more we can choose connection over comparison. Hence, since the way I speak affects the way you listen, I came up with this idea to reunite all these silent conversations I've had with myself to bounce off each other circularly and dynamically. The depth of humanity lives in the curves of emotions.”
Do you plan your work in advance, or is it improvisation?
“It’s a little bit of both. Usually, I write down all of my ideas so they become plans. Then, I prioritize pursuing the ones to which I feel more aligned to, depending on what is going on in my personal life. I reflect on human relationships, so naturally my emotional state greatly influences the messages I share in the artworks. I am very intentional when it comes to choosing the paper, when I get to the paper store, I visualize the project while looking at the papers that are available. This is when improvisation comes to live. I like to spark creativity through the sense of touch and the colors, I believe the parts have nothing and everything to do with the whole: The paper for me is the body of the work, that holds every extension of it together, whether it is sand, cotton, fabriano, canson, pearl, bond; more than the background, it is deeply related to the conceptual development of the idea, so it is very intuitive. I sketch every piece once I have the paper and in the format I intend the idea to come alive. I don't make artist proofs nor digital sketches. I like to work with confidence; yes, I make several mistakes while in this process! If I mess it up, I begin again, but I have never let go of an idea once it is finalized, I like to share all of them. Moreover, all of my happy mistakes exist in a very special place at the studio. They are little treasures I keep for myself!”
Are there any art world trends you are following?
“This is a tough question! I do not necessarily follow a trend but certainly lean towards conceptual art as a movement. It really interests me as it makes me go beyond the image presented to me. I feel alignment to the combination of visual imagery with a strong idea, yet since I use words in my art pieces, that automatically places my line of work in text art, which is more of a combination of language and visual imagery. I find a lot of inspiration in the authors I read in my artistic research. Mental health and self awareness are concepts that have gained lots of attention, specially from younger generations, the past three years, then I proudly say I am part of and follow that trend. Love is most important, above all!”
What process, materials and techniques do you use to create your artwork?
“I specialize on embroidery and paper. I find threading healing, it is a testament to my discovery of the catalytic power of connecting words and feelings, and different works as a group in unison to raise the issues of introspection and self-understanding. Being able to break through the paper with a needle and transforming each hole it leaves into a stitch that later in the process becomes a word, that carries a message of love through resilience; it is one wonderful thing to be able to do! I really like my art! I’m not bragging, I’m just being honest, I like what it communicates, I like that it is light, and I like that within each artwork I create, I heal wounded pieces of my heart, it’s truly repairing something. Traditionally, women have passed on knowledge of weaving through generations and I feel extremely honored to bring such culturally rich technique to a contemporary context. I like to illustrate too, which is why pencil colors are a big part of the body of work that I show now. Growing up, I always colored outside of the lines, and at college they used to tell me I "was too rough" on the paper, because of the strength I used when illustrating. Nowadays, I like to highlight that as part of what makes my technique different.”
“My work reflects on love, its various forms, and the use of language as a tool to understand it.”
What does your art mean to you?
“Art to me, means the most pure approach to humans deepest emotions. It is vulnerability exhibited as an exposed nerve, and ironically I feel words are falling short for such a big question, but that is because it arose big emotions. I gasp in awe and applaud to the bravery of artists. I’m happy and honored to be one of them.”
What’s your favorite artwork and why?
“The Girl always did have good taste, painted by Ed Ruscha, and I think this is the first time I share this thought openly. This piece is different. It is my favorite since I saw it for the first time at The Broad in LA. I remember the exact moment when I saw it, walking between gallery rooms, after passing Koons flowers sculpture, and walking by Barbara Kruger dramatic pieces, there it was... a clear message, white letters and black background. It felt nostalgic, and almost reassuring like a truth behold from the world. I feel the message appeals to how I feel when I have to let go of something, or well someone, and it makes me want to cry, in response to a self-love feeling, its very intense and hard to describe. But I like the lightness of the message, the simplicity of the font, the balance of both colors and that it is big enough for me to be able to read it.”
Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?
“Fortunately, yes! The art industry has been extremely generous to me and I’m happy to share I have had six solo shows in my career. One in Mexico City, two in Bogotá, Colombia and three of them in New York City. The most recent one took place at a gallery called Miyako Yoshinaga in the Upper East Side of Manhattan titled emotional vocabulary. Previously, I showed my pieces at the General Consulate of Colombia, the exhibition was curated by the Argentinian curator Monserrat Miranda and was titled Coleccionando Palabras. I have two big art fairs in the horizon for the Fall season, in New York City Affordable art Fair and in Bogotá, Colombia ARTBO Art Fair with Otros 360 Grados Gallery, the gallery that represents me in Colombia.”
